


Beyond the Sea

by EAWeek



Category: Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Doctor Who
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alien Culture, Alien Planet, Crossover, F/M, Mystery, Romance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 06:26:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3926284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EAWeek/pseuds/EAWeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For most of her young life, Jules Paxton’s world had revolved around football.  That all changed the day a loony git in a blue box crash-landed in her mum’s garden.  Crossover characters from the movie Bend it Like Beckham.  Small RPF moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. No Mermaid

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this story at fanfiction.net. I've edited and reformatted the story and am cross-posting it here.

Title: **Beyond the Sea**

Author: E.A. Week

E-mail: e.a.week at gmail dot com; also on Live Journal as eaweek.

Summary: For most of her young life, Jules Paxton’s world had revolved around football. That all changed the day a loony git in a blue box crash-landed in her mum’s garden.

Category: _Doctor Who_. Crossover characters from the movie _Bend it Like Beckham_.

Distribution: Feel free to link to this story, but **please** drop me at least a brief e-mail and let me know you've done this.

Feedback: Letters of comment are always welcome! Loved it? Hated it? Leave a review, shoot me an email or a PM, and let me know why!

Disclaimers: Copyrights to all characters in this story belong to their respective creators, production companies, and studios. I'm just borrowing them, honest!

Credit where credit is due: The story title is stolen from the song written by Charles Trenet and Jack Lawrence. The tile for Part I is stolen from Sinéad Lohan.

Story rating: This story is rated M for language, sexuality, and adult themes.

Possible spoilers: This story takes place after the fourth season of the new _Doctor Who_ series.

_“The cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears, and the sea.”_

_—Isak Dinesen_

 

**Part I**

_No Mermaid_

The loud mechanical noises began as soon as Jules put her key in the lock. Startled, she looked around the residential street, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. She unlocked the front door, dropping her bag and hurrying into the house.

“Mum? Dad? What’s that racket?” She strode through the dining room and opened the French windows that led out into the garden. Belatedly she remembered her parents had gone to visit Aunt Clemente, who’d just been discharged from hospital after a nasty bout of gallstones.

The noise was even louder out here, an indescribable cacophony of groaning, grinding, and scraping, all overlaid with a high-pitched sonic whine that made Jules clamp her hands over her ears. She looked up at the sky, half-expecting to see a Virgin Atlantic airbus come crashing down on the neighborhood. But the noise didn’t sound quite like an airplane—more like a Tyrannosaurus rex being dragged in chains up a slab of concrete.

Jules blinked. Out of nowhere—literally—appeared a blur of cobalt blue, which resolved into the shape of a tall box, spinning about madly, like a top. The thing hovered in midair for a split second before veering to one side and smashing into Paula’s rose trellis. _Crack!_ The arch of white latticed woodwork fell over onto its side, and the blue object came to a halt in the grass.

Sputtering, Jules charged across the terrace and down the stone steps. The box had translucent windows up top, and over the two doors were the words POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX. A placard to the left read, POLICE TELEPHONE, and beneath that, FREE FOR USE OF PUBLIC. Jules had seen something like it once, in a museum.

The door popped open, and Jules leapt back, body tense. A man in a pinstriped brown suit stood there, squinting into the sunlight.

“Oh, hullo,” he said, expression somewhere between vague and annoyed. He slapped the outside of the wooden blue box. “What’s wrong, old girl? Got a bit of indigestion?”

Jules could only stand there sputtering as the man looked up at the sky.

“Where is this?” he inquired of no-one in particular.

“Wh—it’s my mum’s garden, and look what you just did to her roses! You bloody git—who the hell are you, and what’re you _doing_? What’s that—get that sodding box out of here!”

The man stared at Jules, as if just now properly registering her presence. “London?”

“It’s bleedin’ Hounslow, innit?” she yelled, progressing from aggravated to a righteous froth. “I should have you arrested! Look what you did to my mum’s flowers!”

“I did _not_ set the coordinates for London.” Clearly a nutter of the first order, the man scowled, vanishing back into the box. She heard the echo of his voice, retreating. “I’ve been avoiding this place…”

Jules put a cautious hand on the doorframe, peering inside, and when she saw what lay within the box, her chin dropped.

It had to be some kind of optical illusion. The box looked like a big cupboard on the outside, the size of a changing cabana at the beach. Jules circled around to confirm its dimensions, and when she reached the open doorway again, she took a cautious step inside.

A new world opened up before her eyes. Jules became aware of sound, too, a humming throb, and a faint vibration that came up through her feet. The room was enormous, circular, far too large to be contained in that blue box. Underfoot was a kind of metal grille, and all around, the walls were golden-beige, baffled with what appeared to be small, circular portholes. Tall, oddly-shaped support posts rose up to the ceiling, curved and branching, like tree limbs. In the center of all this sat something that looked like a circular control panel, topped with tall, translucent columns that rose up as far as the ceiling.

The git in the brown suit was hunched over one portion of the control panel, listening to something through a stethoscope. Jules stared, but didn’t touch anything: there were knobs and levers and handles and buttons and glowing, blinking lights, snake-like cables and a flat-screen monitor, all of it jerry-rigged, the overall effect somewhere between high-tech and junk shop.

Since Brown Suit was ignoring her, Jules inched across the metal grille toward an open doorway. A corridor stretched before her, and she could see doorways to both the left and right. She took a few more steps, finding that some of the doors opened onto rooms, others onto yet more corridors. She didn’t make any detours, just kept to the main hallway, until she realized she’d gone so far that behind her, the first doorway had receded to the size of a business envelope. Alarmed, Jules turned and ran back, bursting in on Brown Suit.

“Shh!” he said, leaning over the control panel, listening. “Can you hear that?”

Jules listened. A moment later came a crackle of static, and the sound of a male voice.

“Delilah? Delilah, do you read me, over?” Whoever it was, he sounded young, and Jules found herself strangely touched by the note of desperation in his voice.

“Hello!” Brown Suit shouted. “Hello, who’s this? Who are you looking for?”

After a moment of stunned silence, the male voice said, “This is Captain Maxwell Orion. I’m looking for Delilah Delamere—who are you?”

“This is the Doctor,” Brown Suit responded. “Where are you?”

“I’m on Aldrovanda Seven,” the voice said. “I’m sorry—my communications seem to have—” A burst of static followed. “—scrambled—haven’t heard—missing—” His voice came and went in loud crackles of interference.

“What’s wrong?” asked Jules.

“Never mind that—how’s he even able to patch through to my ship? He shouldn’t be able to do that!” Brown Suit grabbed a nearby mallet and banged it on the console. “Hello! Hello! This is the Doctor; do you read me?”

The static ended, and silence followed.

“Well, that was… random.” Brown Suit scowled, circling the control panel, a pair of black-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose. “You’re really not feeling happy today, are you, old girl?” Jules realized he was talking to the machine.

She went to the open doorway, staring outside at the sun and sky, her mother’s ruined roses. A next-door neighbor had a window open, and Jules could hear music: the Beatles, singing “Hey Jude.”

She turned back to look inside the box, her mind still trying to make some critical leap, still trying to process the incongruity between what her eyes perceived and what common sense told her must be real. By instinct, she knew her life would never be the same after this experience.

“Cognitive dissonance,” the man said, straightening up, folding his spectacles and returning them to a pocket. “It’ll wear off.”

“What—how can you fit all this… this _stuff_ … into this box? Is it some kind of trick?”

“No trick,” he said, folding his arms and leaning against the control panel. “Relative dimensions. The outside is in one dimension, the inside is in another.”

“Another dimension?” Jules repeated, gulping.

“Mmmhmm,” he smiled, nodding. Jules took a better look at him: he was younger than her parents, maybe thirty-five or forty, brown hair, brown eyes, freckles. He was tall, at least six foot, and as skinny as Jules herself.

“Get lost!” she said, exhaling a snort of air. “You expect me to believe that? What’re you supposed to be, some kind of alien?” Then Jules stopped short, a kind of cold horror dawning on her. “Oh, God,” she said. “You… are you… you are, aren’t you?” She started to edge toward the door.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Yeah, right! You just… get out of my mum’s garden and go on back to wherever…” Jules faltered, realizing something. “How’m I even talking to you? You speak English?”

He gave her a tolerant smile. “I speak a lot of languages.”

He seemed so utterly benign that Jules ignored for a moment the primal urge to run for her life. Keeping one eye on the door to make sure it didn’t close, she edged closer to the man in the brown suit.

“You’re seriously an alien?” she asked, half-expecting him to blast her to death with a ray gun, or at the very least announce his intent to conquer the planet.

“Yes,” he said.

“But you… you’re wearing a suit!”

He laughed. “I like Earth clothes,” he said. “They’re comfortable and practical.”

“But you have freckles!” She stared at his face. “And… and stubble… and sideburns… how can aliens have _hair?_ ” Jules felt quite certain that an alien could not have sideburns.

“Lots of aliens have hair!” His tenor voice rose on a note of indignation. “Your first contact with an intelligent species from another world, and all you can do is criticize my grooming?”

Jules burst into nervous, almost hysterical giggles, ending on a loud hiccup.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Is this real?”

“Want to take a spin?” he invited, eyes sparkling.

“Spin where… what?”

“This is a ship,” he said, patting the control panel. “It’s called a TARDIS—stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space. It’s how I get around.”

“This is a space ship? No way! Why’s it look so… I dunno, so antique?”

“Antique!” he almost yelled.

“Can we… you know, visit… another planet?” asked Jules.

An enormous smile split his face. “I thought you’d never ask! What’s your name, by the way?”

“Jules,” she said. “Short for Juliette. Jules Paxton.”

“Jules, I’m the Doctor,” he said, offering a hand.

She shook his hand, amazed at that, that she was actually touching an alien. He had very ordinary hands, the skin cool and dry.

“Where’d you like to go?” he asked.

“Anywhere… look, we can’t be gone too long,” said Jules, stuffing her hair behind her ears. “Mum and Dad’ll be home, and they’ll worry. I’m starting uni in America in a week.”

“Really, which one?” he asked.

“Santa Clara University,” she said. “I was recruited to play on the women’s football team.”

“Brilliant!” he said. “Think of this as a little holiday before classes start. And don’t worry about your mum and dad—I’ll have you back five minutes after we left.”

“You can do that?” she said. “Seriously?”

With a smug little grin, he tapped the control panel again. “Time machine,” he said.

“No _way_!”

“Oh, yes!” he said, almost bouncing up and down with excitement. “So, what do you say? Nip off for a trip through the cosmos, and back in time for tea?”

“All right,” said Jules. How could she say no to this? His offer pretty much defined the expression “chance of a lifetime.”

“Hold on tight!”

“To what?” she asked.

“To anything!”

Jules grabbed onto one of the support posts. With the flick of a lever, the outer doors closed.

“ _Allons-y_ , Jules Paxton!” the Doctor shouted, and flipped another lever. The entire ship began to vibrate.

“Is this normal?” she yelled, hanging on to the support post for dear life, trying to stay upright as the ship lurched and rocked like an amusement park ride that had gone spinning off its tracks.

“Completely!” he shouted, dashing about the circular control panel, flipping switches and pushing buttons.

“You’re barking mad!” she laughed. “I better not live to regret this!”

“No chance!” he said, banging on something with his mallet.

A few moments later, the noise and the movements stopped. Jules waited a beat, then relaxed her grip on the post. “Is that all?”

He pushed a lever on the control panel. “Go look.”

Jules turned and stared. The tall doors stood open, bright sunlight streaming through.

“Is it all right?” she asked. “Is there, you know, air out there?”

“Of course there is!” he said. “I wouldn’t take you to a planet with no atmosphere.”

Slowly, Jules made her way toward the door and stepped outside.

Her mother’s garden was gone—completely gone. Instead, Jules found herself standing on a long spit of sand, as soft and white and fine as powder. Amazed, she reached down and touched it with her hand, letting it sift through her fingers. Directly ahead, about forty feet away, a sheet of turquoise water folded and unfolded against the sand with a quiet rustle and murmur.

“It’s—it’s incredible,” she said, laughing in a quiet gasp, turning around. In the distance, she spotted a smudge of dark green. “Where—what planet is this? Where are we?”

“This is Nelumbo Minor,” the Doctor said, coming to stand beside her. “Nelumbo Major is a few million light years that way.” He pointed off to the right. “Much further away from the sun than this.”

“Another sun,” she said, shading her eyes. “That’s another sun? Like Earth’s?”

“Another star,” he confirmed. “With its own planets, fifteen of them, orbiting around it. We’re standing on one of them—the only one with an atmosphere.”

“Where’s Earth?” asked Jules.

“You can’t see it from here,” he smiled.

“What about our sun? Can we see it at night?”

“Nope,” he said. “Too far away.”

“Oh, my God,” she said. “Me. Jules Paxton, standing on another planet.”

“Isn’t it incredible?” he said. “And I’ll tell you, even after centuries of traveling, it never gets old.”

“Centuries?” she asked.

“Mmmhmm,” he grinned.

“No way. Seriously? How old are you?”

“Nine hundred twenty-seven,” he said. “That’s in Earth years. But in Nelumbo years, I’d be two thousand eleven.”

“You are so full of it!” Jules turned from him to study the landscape around them. “Is this all there is?” she asked, trying not to sound ungrateful. “A beach?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “The amazing thing about Nelumbo Minor is underwater. It’s the most gorgeous coral reef in the entire universe.”

“Can I see it?”

“D’you know how to snorkel?”

“Sure,” said Jules. “We did that once on holiday in Spain.”

“Brilliant!” he said, bounding back for the blue box. “Well, come on, let’s get suited up. We’ve got about fifteen hours of daylight.”

(ii)

By the time the Doctor was ready, Jules was outside on the sand, bouncing with impatience.

“Took you long enough,” she teased.

“Come here,” he said, waving something in his hand.

“What’s that?”

The Doctor was holding a small bottle with a spray nozzle on top. “Ultra-strength sunblock,” he said. “That sun is a lot brighter than Earth’s, and you’ll burn.”

“I never burn,” Jules protested.

“You will here. Turn around.”

Jules turned, and a moment later, she felt a cool tingle on her skin, like a fine mist. “That’s weird,” she said.

“It’s full of micro-particles that’ll deflect UV radiation,” he said.   “Best part is that it’s waterproof and guaranteed to stay on for a week, so no need to re-apply. Now, turn back.”

Jules turned around to face him, and he coated her front. In the ship’s vast wardrobe—three stories full of the most insane costumes Jules had ever seen—she’d located a white bikini, a face mask, snorkels, and swim fins. The bathing suit had adjustable string ties, so Jules had no problems with the fit, and the face mask worked, too, once Jules had fiddled with the rubber strap.

The Doctor wore plain black swim trunks, which made him appear very tall and comically lanky. He had no muscle tone that Jules could discern, and rather a lot of dark body hair. For an alien, he was quite an ordinary bloke. Jules never would have looked at him twice if she’d encountered him on a London street, which she supposed was why he liked Earth: he fit in there. He handed her the bottle of sunblock, and Jules sprayed him down, front and back. He was so pale, she thought, and he must burn easily. Jules herself was nut-brown from a summer spent playing football outdoors.

“Right,” he said, tossing the bottle back inside the blue box and locking the door. He zipped the key into an inner pocket of his shorts. “Ready?”

“Yeah,” she laughed, giddy and nervous. “How much is there to see?”

“The reefs are extensive,” he said. “We can’t see all of them.” They went to the water’s edge and donned their fins and masks. “Nelumbo Minor is one big ocean, with small scattered islands and atolls. But we have enough time to see the reefs around this archipelago.” They duck-walked awkwardly through the surf until they reached deeper water, stopping to adjust their face masks.

“Do we have to worry about sharks, anything like that?” asked Jules.

“Not here—the water’s too warm and shallow. But as a general rule, don’t touch anything.”

“Right,” she said. “Poison stingers, and that?”

“Right!” He mumbled, “ _Allons-y_!” around the mouthpiece of his snorkel and plunged beneath the waves with a taut, springy dive. Jules bit into her own mouthpiece and followed after him.

At first, she could see nothing but sand. Then the ocean floor shelved down a steep incline, and an entire world revealed itself. Gobsmacked, Jules gazed down upon an exotic garden of color, shape, and texture, all of it shimmering and glittering through the glass-clear prism of water.

She poked her head above the surface, laughing. A moment later, the Doctor’s head popped up next to hers, his wet fringe plastered to his forehead.

“What do you think?”

“It’s gorgeous!” she exclaimed.

“Isn’t it brilliant? Want a closer look?”

“All right!”

They took deep breaths and plunged into the waves again, kicking down. Even at this depth, the water proved as tepid as a bath. Jules coasted along the surface of the reefs, taking care not to touch anything. The coral had grown in fantastic configurations, ranging in size from tiny to huge, and in every conceivable color. She’d always thought of coral as pastel, but here on Nelumbo Minor, the colors were rich, almost hyper-saturated, intense jewel tones whose beauty defied description.

Amidst the corals swam schools of fish, as varied in appearance as the reefs themselves, but as profoundly fish-like as any piscine species on Earth. These creatures had fins and gills, their bodies long and slim, and they moved like fish, in sinuous vertical undulations.

At last Jules had to surface for air, and she hit the Doctor with a barrage of questions.

“They’re just like regular fish!” she shouted.

“They _are_ fish,” he laughed.

“Why don’t they look any different? Why don’t they have two heads or more eyes?”

“Evolution, Jules. It works the same everywhere. They’ve evolved the features that suit them best in this environment.”

“Could I eat one of them?” she asked.

“Some of them might not be very tasty,” he said. “Some might even be poisonous.”

“Do they have squids and octopus here?”

“I’m sure they have cephalopod-like species,” he said.

“Can we see them?”

“Look carefully,” he said. “They’re usually good at camouflaging themselves.”

They went down again, this time kicking themselves to the ocean floor. The Doctor pointed, and Jules saw the shape of some soft-bodied creature, hiding beneath the sand. As they watched, the thing lifted itself up, snatched a tiny passing fish, and settled itself back into its hiding place.

The only hindrance to the day’s pleasure was the need to surface periodically for breath. Jules found that she needed to go up more often than the Doctor, who could stay submerged for quite a long spell, but she also discovered the joy of just skimming across the surface of the water, gazing down into the miraculous environment below.

She lost track of time before long, circling around the reefs, following the Doctor and surfacing when he did to question him again about something they’d seen. He proved to be the best kind of teacher: patient, funny, never criticizing or scorning anything Jules had to say.

“I wish Jess could see all this!” Jules lamented. She and the Doctor had come up for air, and were idly backstroking to give their tired muscles a rest. Overhead, the sun shone warm and benign, lingering endlessly in the sky.

“Who’s Jess?” the Doctor inquired.

“My mate,” she told him. “Jesminder Bhamra. We play football together. We were both recruited to play for Santa Clara.”

“So, that’s what you do?” he asked. “Play football?”

“That’s not _all_ I do,” said Jules, feeling self-conscious.

“What about school?”

“What about it?” she asked.

“What’ll you study at uni?”

“Dunno,” said Jules. “It’s different at American universities—you don’t need to know what you’re gonna do straight off.” She blushed to admit that academics had always been something she’d fit in around matches and practices. Kicking along, she said, “I wanna be a professional footballer.” Before he could chide her for that particular ambition, she said, “How ‘bout you? What do they teach you at alien school?”

He burst out laughing, but Jules saw something sad and faraway in his face.

“Sorry, was that a stupid question?” she asked.

“Not at all! We learned loads of science. The history of our planet and people. Literature—there were all these epic poems we had to memorize in an archaic form of our language.” His face grew moody, reflective. “And if you showed the right aptitude, you learned how to travel through time and space.”

“Like you?”

“Not at first,” he grinned. “I nicked a TARDIS and ran off with it. Everything I learned, I learned on the fly, as it were.”

“So, you’re a renegade?” she said.

He huffed, “I prefer ‘free spirit.’”

“So, d’you do this all the time?” she asked. “Pick up random people on other planets and show them the universe?”

“That’s the best bit,” he said.

“Are you in some kind of trouble? Will I get arrested ‘cuz I scarpered with you?”

“No!” he laughed.

“So, you’re an intergalactic hobo, then?”

“Stop trying to put me in little categories,” he complained.

“Just trying to suss out your game.”

“I don’t have one. I travel, I explore, I wander wherever my muse takes me.”

“I still think you’re full of it,” said Jules.

“What is it with you mouthy London girls?” The Doctor pulled himself upright, shaking his head. He slid the mask back over his eyes. “We have about three more hours of daylight,” he said. “Then, back to the TARDIS. All right?”

“All right!” said Jules, adjusting her mask and snorkel before they dived down again.

Before they know it, they’d made a circuit of the small island, but with the sun still hovering in the sky, Jules felt reluctant to get in the TARDIS just yet. Home felt like it would be small and colorless after this excursion.

“What’s that?” She pointed to the green smudge she’d noticed earlier.

“Another island,” he said. “Want to have a butchers?”

“All right!”

They plunged straight across into deeper water. A strong current ran between the islands, but Jules had no problem navigating; she wondered if the tide were going in or out. She and the Doctor let the tumbling surf wash them up onto the beach, and they rolled across the wet sand, laughing.

“I need to do this more often!” the Doctor said, getting to his feet and reaching down to slip off the fins.

“Do what?”

“Get out like this—see something beautiful.”

“Instead of what?”

“Oh, nothing. I’ve just landed in too many industrial slag-heaps lately.”

“Not Earth,” Jules said, forehead puckering.

“No, no, no! I need to do things like this—snorkel, watch fish—so relaxing, don’t you think?”

“It’s pretty.” Jules shaded her eyes, studying a strand of exotic trees. Over the sound of crashing surf, she could hear the calls of birds. “Can we look around?”

“Yes, but stay on the beach. We’re not dressed for the jungle.”

Divested of snorkels, fins, and masks, they wandered the white sands, Jules splashing into and out of the surf, examining the shells she found.

“You’re a great bloke,” she told him. “Thanks so much for all this! What a day!”

“Hmm.” He stood shading his eyes, staring down the beach.

“What?” she said. “What’d you see?”

“I just thought…”

Jules followed his line of vision. “Doctor,” she said, “are those _people_?”

“Hang back a bit, Jules,” he murmured. “They might never have seen anyone from off-world, and we’re very apt to frighten them.”

Jules watched the small group, which appeared to be engaged in some kind of labor. “What’re they doing?”

“Fishing,” the Doctor told her. “That’s a net they’re bringing in.”

Now Jules could see it clearly: the people, the net they were trying to haul up onto the beach. The ropes seemed very full of large, heavy fish.

And then someone screamed.

Forgetting his earlier injunction to stay put, the Doctor took off at a sprint, Jules on his heels.

(iii)

Jules saw straight away what had happened: one of the fish had a long bony protuberance extending from its nose, like a swordfish, wickedly serrated on both sides, and this had slashed a small girl in the leg. Bright red blood spurted out across the sand. Her companions—children, Jules realized, not one a day older than twelve—stood wailing; none of them had the slightest idea what to do. Their wails turned to shrieks of fear when the two newcomers came barreling into their midst.

“Jules!” the Doctor barked, scooping up the child and laying her down on the sand, “elevate her leg and put pressure on it!”

“With what?” asked Jules.

“Your hands!”

Jules obeyed, lifting the girl’s leg into her lap and pressing down on the ugly gash with both hands. The other children stood in a cluster nearby, sobbing.

“It’s all right, it’s all right!” the Doctor called to them. “We’re here to help.” He’d pulled something from the zippered inner pocket of his shorts and was using it to cut a long strip of rope from the fishing net.

“What’s that?”

“Sonic screwdriver,” he told her. While Jules held the little girl steady, the Doctor used the rope to bind the wound closed, as best he could. Jules took a curious look at the alien child: she appeared to be about seven or eight years old, skin tanned dark brown, an exotic contrast with her white-blonde hair. Her eyes were green, almost the exact color of the sea water. _She could be from Earth_ , Jules thought. _She looks completely human_. Then she took a better look, and her mouth fell open.

“Doctor, look at her hands! Look at her _feet_!”

“I know, Jules,” he murmured. He passed the sonic screwdriver over the girl’s injury; amazed, she watched as the torn flesh knitted itself back together, leaving an angry red welt behind.

“What’d you do?” she gasped.

“Sutured and sterilized the cut,” he said, holding up the tool so that Jules could see it better.

“That is _wicked_!” she breathed.

“Right,” he said, pocketing the instrument. “We need to find out… ah. Jules. Don’t move.”

“Why?” she said, then went still when a shadow fell across them. She looked up and realized they were surrounded by a half-dozen athletic young men, all naked save a simple loincloth. Each youth carried a long wooden shaft tipped with a length of serrated bone: the spear-tips must have come from the same fish that had cut the girl’s leg. Jules realized to her horror how she and the Doctor must look: both splattered with the child’s blood, their hands red and dripping.

“Aah,” the Doctor said. “I know what this looks like, but I can explain—”

“Silence!” One of the boys—the warriors all appeared to be about sixteen or seventeen—put his spear to the Doctor’s neck. “How dare you touch the royal princess, you filthy outsiders?”

“We were trying to save her life!” shot Jules.

“Stand up,” the leader ordered. The Doctor and Jules obeyed. One of the warriors leaned down and lifted the girl, who by now was almost unconscious, eyelids fluttering. Jules didn’t like the way her breathing sounded.

“Keep her leg elevated,” the Doctor told the chief warrior. Jules marveled that he could keep his voice so calm. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”

“We’ll care for her ourselves,” the warrior spat. “As for you, your fate is in the hands of King Leonidis. Now, get moving.” And with their spears, the warriors prodded the two time travelers forward.

(iv)

The trail the warriors followed traversed a wide semicircle around the island, avoiding the dense jungle. Jules tried to fight off panic: the sun was setting, and very little daylight remained for her and the Doctor to swim back to the TARDIS. Despite his promise to return her home, she fretted at how her parents would react to her absence. What would they think when they found her missing?

She kept looking at the Doctor, but apart from shooting her a few reassuring looks, he did nothing. He scarcely looked worried, and Jules suspected part of him was enjoying their predicament. She didn’t know how to react to that, whether to feel reassured or aggravated. Maybe a bit of each. At least she didn’t worry so much that they were in mortal peril.

The party came around a bend, and there on a spit of land sat an enormous rock edifice. When they drew closer, Jules could see the rock was honeycombed with holes, and from within those openings, firelight flickered. The warriors led Jules and the Doctor straight into one of the lower openings. _A cave_ , Jules realized, a maze-like series of caves within the vast rock.

Jules and the Doctor were ordered into in a side-room, and a warrior was left to guard them. The other warriors and the children went elsewhere; Jules could hear the echo of their voices.

“Lovely parlor,” the Doctor remarked, leaning against a large boulder.

“What’s going on?” Jules hissed. “What’re they doing?”

“Going to see their king, I’d imagine. He’ll decide what to do about us.”

“What if he decides to have us executed?”

“He won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Jules, don’t worry.” The Doctor was examining the cave walls, indifferent to their fate. “This entire rock must’ve been under water at one time. Isn’t it brilliant—a natural fortress!”

Jules punched his arm.

“Ow!”

“You prat!” she exploded.

“Jules—it’ll be all right. Most societies have laws of hospitality.”

“You’ve done this before,” Jules realized, folding her arms. “This is all one big lark to you, innit?”

“Adventure,” he grinned, bouncing on his feet. “If you want excitement, you need to take some risks.”

“Well, thanks a lot, Mister! If I die here, bring my body back home to Mum and Dad, yeah?” Jules eyed the adolescent warrior, wondering if she and the Doctor together could overpower him. Then she abandoned that train of thought, assuming the Doctor would want no part in it.

Some time later, with Jules growing ever more anxious, a slim adolescent girl appeared. “The prisoners are to be brought to King Leonidis and Queen Alena,” she announced.

The guard motioned Jules and the Doctor out of their cell, and he escorted them deeper into the stone fortress. Jules took care with her footing, not wanting to slip and fall, and it irked her to see the Doctor gazing about at the walls and ceilings like a tourist in Westminster Abbey. She felt grubby and irritable; the little girl’s blood had dried into an unpleasant itchy crust on her hands, and although everyone in this strange society went practically naked, Jules still felt vulnerable clad in only the white bikini.

Before long, the twisting corridor opened into a large chamber. This area had been furnished—if it even could be called that—with mats woven from dried grasses and a few low tables created from a bamboo-like wood. Garlands of seashells decorated the cave walls. People milled about: warriors with spears and unarmed civilians. Jules ventured a couple of quick, curious looks: the men wore loincloths, and the women wore simple, two-piece outfits: a strip of fabric wrapped and folded about the hips, with a second strip of fabric to support the breasts. All the adults carried at their waist a small utility knife. The children were entirely naked.

The warrior who’d been guarding Jules and the Doctor announced, “The prisoners, as you requested, my lord.”

The people in the room parted ranks, and Jules found herself standing face-to-face with a man who towered over her, so tall that his head came within a few inches of the cavern ceiling, and so massive that she gulped in apprehension. He was very powerfully built, broad through the chest, arms endlessly long. She put his age at maybe twenty-five or thirty. Jet-black hair fell down past his shoulders, touched with not a trace of gray. High cheekbones gave his face its long, narrow shape, and his jaw ended in an aggressive, if somewhat underslung chin. His eyebrows, thick untamed hedges, met almost in the middle of his forehead. A solemn expression suggested he didn’t smile often.

The woman beside him seemed dainty and petite, though Jules estimated she must stand at least five-ten or taller. Her hair was pale blonde, eyes sea-green, face arresting in its beauty, and Jules realized this must be the mother of the injured girl. _Of course_ , she thought. The guard had referred to the child as “the royal princess”—she must be the king and queen’s daughter.

The tall man spoke. “Strangers to Nelumbo,” he said, his voice low and mossy, “explain your presence here.”

The Doctor straightened up, and despite his mussed hair, blood-encrusted hands, and rumpled swimming trunks, a cloak of dignity seemed to descend over him. At that moment, he seemed equal in stature and majesty to Leonidis.

“Your Excellence, might I introduce myself? I’m the Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, and this is my traveling companion, Juliette Paxton of the planet Earth—Sol 3.”

“And what brings you to Nelumbo?”

“Curiosity,” the Doctor provided. “I’m a scientist by training, and Jules is a young scholar, so we came here to make a survey of Nelumbo’s coral reefs. We heard someone screaming and went to help.” As he spoke, his voice shifted, its tones becoming full, round, his face open and very candid. Jules found herself melting beneath the sway of his charm and authority. “If we’ve violated some custom or taboo, then you have our sincerest apologies. I did think that saving the girl’s life should take precedence over anything else.”

Leonidis nodded. He didn’t smile, but his face had relaxed, and Jules could see that he, too, had fallen prey to the Doctor’s almost hypnotic spell.

“I see,” he responded. “In that case, I can hardly punish you for your actions. Thank you for helping her—Fauna’s the daughter of my queen, Alena.”

The woman beside him smiled, though the expression lacked sincerity. She seemed no older than Jules, maybe twenty at most. “Apples in her cheeks” was how Paula would have described her face, though Jules would have laughed at her mother’s flowery turn of phrase. Alena would be reckoned a tremendous beauty anywhere, almost goddess-like in her symmetrical blonde perfection.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice an enchantment. “We’re most grateful.”

“And in token of our gratitude, we invite you to stay on a few nights,” Leonidis added. “The Festival of Three Moons will soon be upon us, and we’d be honored to have you as our guests.”

“Our pleasure,” the Doctor beamed. “Of course we’ll stay.”

“Splendid,” said Leonidis. “Jurek will show you where to wash, and you can dine with us tonight. I look forward to learning about these worlds you come from.”

(v)

“Are you _mad_?” Jules hissed.

“Given that he could’ve executed us, it’d be churlish to say no.” The Doctor plunged his head into the fresh, cold water, then stood up after a moment, shaking his hair and rubbing his face dry on a coarse towel.

Jules scowled but followed suit, eager to clean off the blood and sticky salt. The outdoor washing area consisted of a basin full of fresh water, perched on a rock. The basin had been fashioned from a single giant seashell, as beautiful and innovative as it was utilitarian. Jurek, one of the young guards, handed Jules a second towel, which she used to dry her hands and face. The fabric wasn’t very soft or absorbent, but Jules suspected it would dry quickly. The simple clothes that the people of Nelumbo wore had been made from the same material—it felt like a kind of rough linen.

“You just wanna stay here and be nosy,” Jules muttered. “I have a life to get back to, Doctor! It might not be as exciting as gallivanting ‘round the universe, but—”

“Jules.” He put hands on her shoulders. “I promise you, I’ll take you back just minutes after we left. Nobody will ever know you were gone, and you won’t miss any time.”

“Promise? I thought this was gonna be a quick trip, not a gap year.”

He made two x-marks on his chest. “Cross my hearts.”

“Hearts?” she repeated, not sure if she’d heard him correctly.

“Two of them,” he said.

“What, one isn’t good enough, or d’you need a spare in case the other stops working?”

He sighed. “No, my species evolved a binary vascular system over time.”

Jules folded her arms, feeling the magic of the expedition wearing off. “God, you’re _such_ a prat!”

“Come on, Jules!” he said, eyes big and shining. Jules had begun to realize there was more to this alien bloke than she’d first realized, and now she could see that getting home wasn’t going to be a simple process, nor was it likely to happen any time soon. “It’s a holiday on a fantastic planet, and you’ll get to learn about an intelligent species while we’re here.”

Her mouth twitched. She found it almost impossible to resist eyes like those, especially since he was giving her the sense he’d be gutted if she insisted on leaving right now. Besides, there was a lot more of the planet to see, even just in the immediate vicinity, and those odd fish-people intrigued her. Jules reminded herself that she’d soon be leaving for uni in another country; what better preparation could she have for adjusting to new cultures and experiences than a brief sojourn in a completely different world?

“All right,” she said at last. “But we’re leaving as soon as this moon festival is over.”

“Brilliant!”

“God, will you stop _saying_ that? Brilliant this and brilliant that—” Jules paused in mid-rant because she’d begun to laugh. For all she knew, the Doctor was mind-controlling her, but she just couldn’t stay angry at him. It was like trying to stay angry at a mischievous puppy.

The smell of food cooking wafted on the sea breeze, and Jules realized she was ravenous.

“That smells wonderful,” she told Jurek.

“Come with me,” he invited, smiling at her. “We eat on the beach.”

The two travelers followed behind him, and Jules didn’t complain when the Doctor slipped a friendly hand into hers.

(vi)

The people of Nelumbo had an interesting way of cooking food: they dug a big pit in the sand, lined the pit with stones, and kindled a fire at the bottom. When the fire had burned down, fish wrapped in green leaves were placed in the coals and the whole business covered with wet seaweed. A few hours later, the fish were baked to juicy perfection.

Jules and the Doctor sat with Leonidis, cross-legged on woven grass mats. Oddly, Alena didn’t join them: she sat off to one side with a group of women. Jules realized that the injured girl, Fauna, wasn’t the eldest—or only—royal child. There were two older than her and two younger, a brood of five altogether, three girls and two boys. The oldest was a comely lad of about twelve, and Jules felt shocked by his age. Assuming Alena was older than she appeared, closer to twenty-five than twenty, she must have started bearing children at thirteen or fourteen.

A small gaggle of people gathered around the king, wanting to hear more about the two strangers. Jules found herself in the unforeseen position of speaking as a representative of an entire planet.

“Erm… it’s… well, there’s more people than you’ve got here,” she opened.

“How many?” a boy asked.

“Uh… about six billion, I think. Right, Doctor?”

“Give or take,” he smiled.

“What’s a billion?” the boy inquired, and Jules realized that while these people could count, they couldn’t fathom a number so large.

“We have as many people there as you have fish in the sea,” she ventured. This declaration was met with great scorn.

“Impossible!”

“How is there room for everyone?”

“What do you all eat?”

“Well, there’s a lot more land,” said Jules. “We have oceans, but there’s huge pieces of land called continents, and that’s where people live.”

Much of the people’s curiosity centered around Jules herself.

“How can you swim with such small hands and feet?”

“Well, usually when people on Earth swim, it’s for fun.”

“How do you get around?” a girl inquired. “Boats?”

“We live on land,” Jules told her. “We don’t need to swim to get around. We use boats to get across water, but people on Earth walk, mainly. And if we’re going anywhere over a long distance, we have… machines that can carry us around.”

“What are machines?”

Jules had to let the Doctor answer that one. He responded by explaining how it would be if the people of Nelumbo could attach a device like a cooking spit to the back of a boat, that when turned, would propel the craft across the water. The people grasped this notion, but they had a harder time with the idea of the spit turning itself, until the Doctor used the example of a wheel turned by the wind.

Through all this chatter, Leonidis sat without saying anything, but listening, his face solemn and thoughtful. Jules found it odd that nothing she or the Doctor said seemed to surprise him. Maybe he’d just learned composure, being the king. Though the others held him in high regard, most everyone seemed on familiar terms with him, and he made no complaint when people bumped into him or small children crawled across his lap.

The people of Nelumbo were generous to a fault, encouraging the two guests to eat and eat. Jules followed the Doctor’s example and tried a little of everything, finding the fish tender and well-cooked, though somewhat flavorless. She wondered if the people here had never heard of herbs or spices. In addition to the fish, there were starchy roots, and for something sweet, fruits and berries. One of the fruits was so tart that Jules found her eyes watering, but there was a purple berry so delicious that she ate until she was gorged. The only utensils the people used were those small knives, made from the same fish bone as the warriors’ spear-tips. Otherwise, everyone ate with their fingers. To drink, there was fresh water, served in cups made from seashells.

“Where d’you get the water?” Jules asked a young woman sitting nearby.

“In the forest, there’s a spring,” the girl explained. She appeared to be maybe fifteen, very pretty, and she was nursing an infant of about six months.

Jules didn’t observe any of the babies in the group wearing nappies. The mothers simply held the babies away from themselves, letting them pass waste wherever they happened to be. The adults relieved themselves at the edge of the water, in full view of everyone.

Leaning over to the Doctor, Jules murmured, “This all takes some getting used to.”

Nothing could diminish his enthusiasm. “Just go with it, Jules.”

“Yeah, and watch where I step.”

By the time the meal ended, Jules found herself exhausted, and Leonidis said, “Jurek will show you where to sleep.”

That turned out to be a chamber in the big fortress, on one of the lower levels, with a large hole overlooking the inky sea. Three moons had risen, all waxing toward full, and Jules watched them, absently rubbing the porous rock with her fingertips.

“So, we’re the first outsiders these people have ever met?” she asked.

“So it would seem,” the Doctor responded.

“Won’t they catch diseases from us?” she fretted. “You know, like smallpox?”

“Why?” he asked, astonished.

“Dunno,” she said. “It was something I read, once.”

“Jules, have you ever had smallpox?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been exposed to anyone with it?”

“Not that I know.”

“Then how could you possibly give these people smallpox?”

She sighed. “Never was much good at science.”

“Have you had all your shots?”

“God, yes.” That was required, to play football.

“Then it’s fine. There’s no diseases you can give these people.”

“Oh.” Jules watched as the Doctor fussed with their bedding: a couple of long, woven straw mats and a pair of rough blankets. She said, “You didn’t say too much about yourself tonight.”

“Hmm?”

“I told ‘em all about Earth… where’d you say you’re from? Galilee?”

Without looking at her, he said, “Gallifrey.”

“And what’d you say you are? A time-something?”

“Time Lord.” He eased himself down onto one of the mats, wrapping the blanket around himself.

“What’s that mean?”

“It’s my species.” His voice sounded remote, maybe even angry.

“Don’t talk about it if you don’t want to, then,” said Jules, leaving the window and going to adjust her own bedding. There were no pillows, so she improvised one by scrunching an end of the blanket, wrapping the rest of the fabric around herself. Not that there was much need for covers: the air was very mild, even here at the water’s edge. “G’dnight.”

She’d almost fallen asleep when the Doctor spoke.

“Jules?”

“Yeah?”

His voice was small. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she smiled into the darkness. “Get some sleep.”

(v)

The sound of rushing water broke into her early morning slumber. Funny how that sound, waves breaking on the beach, could sound like a noisy crowd of cheering people. Jules sighed and turned over, drifting halfway between sleep and true wakefulness.

“I don’t think he’s gonna get this one.” Her father spoke, clear as day.

“Don’t be silly, Alan, of course he will,” Paula responded.

“Nah, how can he? He must be tired by now. I think his friend’s gonna get this one.”

“Mum?” said Jules, surprised. “Dad? What’re you doing here?”

“Five quid says I’m not,” Alan challenged.

“Five quid says you are.” Jules could hear the teasing laugh in her mother’s voice.

“Deal?” said Alan.

“Deal,” agreed Paula.

Jules blinked, staring at the cavern ceiling. In a twinkling, the previous day came back to her. She’d spent the night on an alien planet! Excited, she pushed aside the linen blanket and stood. She was alone; the Doctor must already be awake. Outside, the sun had risen—alien star, alien world—and she, Jules Paxton, was standing right in the middle of it.

The excitement of the adventure came flooding back, and Jules bounced across the sandy floor, outside the stone fortress to the beach, where she found a few people milling about the fire pit.

“Hello, Jules!” The young woman with the baby stood, holding some kind of platter in her hand. When Jules got closer, she realized it was a broad, flat piece of bone. “Are you hungry?”

“Famished,” said Jules. “What’s for breakfast?”

“Fish,” the young woman laughed. Jules struggled to think of the girl’s name, then she remembered: Saba. “Plus, some of those berries you like. Here.”

“Thank you so much,” said Jules, sitting gratefully on the sand. Unlike the previous night’s dinner, breakfast seemed to be more of a catch-as-catch-can affair, people milling in and out to help themselves. “Who gets all this ready?”

“Excuse me?” asked Saba. “What do you mean?”

“I dunno… who does the cooking here?”

“What a strange question,” Saba teased. “We all do.” She nodded toward a group of children who were splashing into the surf, plunging into deeper water. “They’re going fishing, and when they get back, the adults will do the cooking.”

“So, the kids fish, and the adults cook? Why?”

Saba patted her baby, which hung in a sling wrapped around her shoulders. “Usually because we have little ones to look out for, and you can’t exactly do that underwater.”

“Oh. That makes sense, I guess.” Jules finished eating, then asked, “If it isn’t too rude… can I see your baby’s feet?”

“Why not?” Saba laughed. She unfolded a corner of the sling and let Jules have a look.

“These are so wild,” Jules marveled, touching the infant’s feet, a miniature version of Saba’s. Everyone on Nelumbo had hands and feet like these—big, the fingers and toes very long. Instead of two knuckle joints, the digits of both hands and feet had three. And between the fingers and toes were delicate webbed membranes, extending up to the first knuckle joint.

Saba looked down at Jules’ feet. “Yours are so funny,” she said. “They’re so small, and your toes are so stubby. You must not be able to do much with them.”

“I can walk, run, and kick a football with them,” said Jules. “That’s enough for me.”

“What’s a football?”

“A round ball, about this big,” said Jules, demonstrating with her hands. “Football’s a game you play in two teams—two groups of people. You kick the ball around with your feet.”

“That sounds peculiar,” Saba said. “Not to mention painful.” She reached across the sand with her foot, nagged a bit of driftwood in between two toes, and flicked the wood into the fire. Jules stared with her mouth open: Saba’s feet were so flexible that they almost served as a second pair of hands.

“That is brilliant!” she said, then clamped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, no!”

“What?”

“Now he’s got _me_ saying it!”

“Who are you talking about?”

“The Doctor—that bloke I’m traveling with.” Jules glanced around the beach. “D’you have any idea where he is?”

“I think he went out to explore the mangroves.” Saba pointed. “That way.”

“Thanks,” Jules told her, and went to go search for her peculiar companion.

(vi)

The mangrove swamp extended around the back of the island, trees that stretched enormous, bizarre root systems into the sea water. Jules gaped at the roots, then at the trees they supported. _Fantastic!_ she thought, floating on her back and staring up, shading her eyes. Amongst the broad, flat leaves of the trees, she spotted gorgeous birds, as vividly colored as the coral reefs and fish, some as large as eagles, others as tiny as sparrows.

The waters around the mangrove roots were very shallow, and here Jules saw more fish, flitting in schools, the perfect formations scattering at her approach. She hugged the shoreline, following the mangroves until she reached a kind of sheltered lagoon. She paddled in for a closer look, rearing back with surprise when the surface whelmed, and up popped the Doctor, face mask strapped to his head, fins on his feet.

“Jules!” he shouted.

“Good morning to you, too,” she laughed, still trying to catch her breath. “How long’ve you been out here?”

“Since sunrise.” He swam over to a nearby tree, where he’d stashed a second mask, a snorkel, and a pair of fins. “Here’s your gear.”

“So, what’re you looking at down there?” Jules slipped the fins onto her feet.

“It’s like a miniature nursery,” he said, vibrating with excitement. “All sorts of things come here to breed because it’s so sheltered. _Allons-y_!”

They plunged down, and Jules saw immediately what he meant: the mangrove roots were like cages, providing perfect shelter for young sea-creatures to develop, safely away from large predators. She and the Doctor observed not only fish, but a host of reptilian and amphibious creatures. Most amazing was some type of seal, a mammal with large doe eyes and a whiskered snout, gazing out at Jules before vanishing among the roots and seaweed.

“That’s amazing!” she exclaimed when they surfaced for air again. “Oh, it’s so sweet!”

“Aren’t they lovely?”

“I thought seals lived in cold water?” Jules asked him.

“Those are a different kind of marine mammal, one adapted to warm water. They won’t have the insulating fat a seal on Earth would have.”

They side-stroked around on the surface, and Jules asked, “So those people we met, are they the only people on the entire planet?”

“They might be,” the Doctor said. “I hadn’t even realized Nelumbo Minor is inhabited. Even if there’s other tribes, the overall population must be tiny.”

“So, how’d they evolve?” asked Jules. “Do they have, I dunno, apes and monkeys that live in water here?”

“Not sure,” the Doctor said. “The people might not’ve evolved on this planet—they might’ve come from another world, at first.”

“Seriously?” asked Jules. “But they’re… I dunno, they’re still… eating with their hands and stuff.” She hated to use a word like “primitive,” considering that might well be how beings from another world would describe the people of Earth. “It’s not like they’ve got rocket ships.”

“Oh, they might be the descendants of a party that crash-landed,” the Doctor said. “Whatever technology they possessed would’ve been lost over time. Their bodies adapted to the aquatic environment.”

“And that’s why they’ve got those weird hands and feet?”

“Exactly.”

Something else had been nagging at the back of her mind, and Jules finally managed to prod the question to the forefront of her consciousness.

“There’s nobody old here,” she realized out loud. “I think Leonidis is like the oldest person we’ve seen, and he’s what, thirty?”

“Nobody lives to be much older,” the Doctor said.

“Seriously?” Jules was aghast as something occurred to her. “Do they kill people when they get old?”

“No, no, no, the people just don’t live very long. They don’t seem to have much in the way of medicine. Look how the children reacted when Fauna was injured—they didn’t know the first thing about applying pressure. So people are going to die from relatively minor ailments—small injuries, infections, an illness they can’t shake off…”

“That’s so sad,” Jules murmured.

“That’s what life was like on Earth until recently, and still is that way for a lot of people,” the Doctor reminded her. “You owe a lot of your longevity to modern medicine and sanitation.”

“True,” said Jules. “Never thought much about that. God, there’s so many things I’ve never thought about at all. Just took everything for granted.”

“Travel,” the Doctor smiled. “It opens the eyes.”

Something knocked Jules in the leg, and she shouted out loud.

“What, what is it?” the Doctor asked.

“Nothing,” she laughed. “Fish bumped into me, that’s all. Can we go look again?”

“Why not?”

They spent another half-hour diving down and swimming around the lagoon, observing the many different species. Once, when they surfaced for air, they were lucky enough to see one of the bigger tropical birds swooping down to snatch a fish from the water.

“Did you _see_ that?” Jules shrieked. “What a dive! I thought it was gonna land right in the water!”

“Fine dining,” the Doctor laughed. “Raptors have incredible eyesight, and I’ll bet they can spot fish from a mile off.”

About ten minutes later, Jules surfaced to find the Doctor grimacing and thrashing. “Yaaah,” he complained in a loud voice.

“What happened?” asked Jules, shooting through the water to his side. “Did something bite you?”

“No, foot cramp. Ow!” He managed to get the fin off his right foot.

“Well, come over here and stretch it out.” Jules put an arm around his shoulders, guiding him over to a nearby tree. At her instruction, he braced his back against the trunk, stretching his foot against a root. “Better?”

“Getting there,” he winced.

“We need some Lucozade,” Jules laughed. “That’s what we drink in practice to keep from cramping up. Bet they don’t have any here, though.”

“Electrolytes,” the Doctor nodded, pulling the fin off his left foot. “That’s the downside of these things—they force your feet into a hard arch, and the leg muscles keep contracting…” He braced the left foot and stretched that one, also.

Jules did the same, taking off her fins and stretching, sitting on the root opposite the Doctor.

“Maybe we should get back,” she said.

“Hmm, in a few minutes,” he agreed.

“Lemme see your foot,” she said. Taking the right foot in her hand, Jules gently massaged the arch, then worked her way up the back of his leg, releasing the tense muscles.

“You’re quite good at that,” he observed.

“Yeah, we get loads of sore muscles on the girls’ side.”

“Girls’ side?”

“Hounslow Harriers, my football club. Well, not mine for much longer. I’ll be one of the Santa Clara Broncos in another fortnight.” Jules glanced over to find the Doctor gazing at her with big eyes, and she realized she’d stopped massaging his sore muscles, and instead was stroking the skin for the sheer pleasure of it. Normally she would have stopped right away and stammered some apology, but his expression told her he didn’t want her to stop, and Jules felt an excited flush, as well as a low-down throb.

She kept stroking his leg, working her way up from knee to thigh. The Doctor’s breathing had shifted audibly, and he kept swallowing hard.

“Uh… Jules.” If that was his idea of a protest, it was an awfully feeble one.

“All right,” she smiled, hauling herself up beside him on the broad root. “How much of a bloke are you?”

“Are… am I… what?”

Jules reached around back and untied her bikini top. Then, without any further ado, she slipped out of the bottoms as well. The Doctor’s eyes went from big to enormous. Jules leaned down and pressed her lips to his.

The kiss went on and on, teeth clicking, tongues meeting and exploring. By the time they parted, they both were breathing very hard, as if they’d swum flat-out for a mile without stopping.

“Uh… Jules… we really… uh, that is…”

“Shh.” Jules kissed him again, helping him wiggle out of the swim suit. He sat with his back braced against the tree trunk, and Jules straddled his hips with her legs. “Talking is optional,” she teased. “Grunting, however, is definitely encouraged.”

(vii)

Jules paddled around the lagoon, lying on her back and smiling up at the sky. Nearby, she heard a quiet splashing; the Doctor was washing his face, his hands, taking a kind of improvised bath.

“You all right?” she asked, pulling up beside him.

“Aah,” he said, awkward and flustered. “Jules, you know, I don’t usually pick up passengers to just—” His arm flailed. “In fact, I—”

“Oh, stop,” she teased, wrapping herself around him and silencing him with a kiss. “Is there something wrong with having a bit of a shag?”

“No, but that’s not why I wanted you to come with me.”

She kissed him again, amused that any man with blood in his veins would be fastidious about a girl offering herself so freely. “You’re the weirdest bloke I’ve ever met,” she said. “Don’t Time Whatevers have a fling sometimes?”

“I don’t make a habit of it,” he said.

Feeling miffed now, Jules said, “Sorry… would you rather we didn’t?”

“No, no!” He relaxed and kissed her. “Jules… you’re a lovely girl. I’m just not used to someone being so… so forward, that’s all.”

“You really are sweet,” she said, nuzzling his face, delighted by his shyness. “Trust me, there’s no strings attached to this. It’s a holiday in the tropics, and when it’s over, we go our separate ways. I don’t fancy moving into that blue box with you.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” he said after a beat.

Jules shook her head. “No.”

“It’s up to you,” he said, awkward again. “If you’d like to come with me…”

“Why’d you say you’ve been avoiding London?”

“What?”

“When you first landed in the garden, you said you’d been avoiding London,” Jules reminded him.

“I did?” he squawked.

“You were talking to yourself. Was there some bird who jilted you?”

Indignant, he said, “Now, there’s a leap of logic if ever I saw one.”

“‘Mouthy London girls,’” Jules quoted at him. “Exhibit B.”

His shoulders slumped. “All right, all right. Yes, there was someone. But it’s not what you think.”

“From London?”

“Yes.”

“When?” asked Jules.

“About… twenty-five years ago.”

“That’s a long time ago.”

“Not for me it isn’t,” he said.

“Did she jilt you?”

“No.”

Something horrible occurred to Jules. “Oh, my God, is she dead?”

“No. No, she’s just… gone. She doesn’t remember anything about her time with me. I… I changed her life, then I had to take all that away from her.”

The pain in his eyes and voice was palpable. Jules gave him a gentle squeeze.

“Sorry,” she said. “So, me being here, does it make all that better or worse?”

“Oh, better!” he said. “So much better. Jules—you’ve pulled me out of the doldrums and made me stop feeling sorry for myself.” He kissed her nose. “Thank you.”

Jules kissed him back. “So, why do you wanna stay here?” she said. “Are you seriously interested in that moon festival?”

He perked up. “Time’s in flux on this planet.”

“What’s that mean?”

“In time,” he explained, “there’s always fixed points that can’t be altered, and there’s points that’re in flux—events can change and go any number of ways. Time’s in flux on Nelumbo, things are changing—I want to know why.” He gave her a lopsided apologetic smile. “Sorry.”

“You should’ve just said so,” Jules laughed.

“The really interesting bit is that time’s in flux around one point, and I can’t figure for the life of me where it is or even _what_ it is.”

“Will you know it when you find it?”

“Yes. Or, I should,” he told her. “Another thing that’s odd, though.”

“What’s that?” asked Jules.

“You’re involved with it.”

“For real?”

“You’re important, Jules. The TARDIS threw me off course so that I landed in your garden. For some reason it was important for you to come with me to Nelumbo.”

“Me, important?” she laughed. “Of all the people on Earth, a footballer from Hounslow?” Then she asked, “So, the TARDIS can think? Does it, you know, talk to you?”

“Not exactly, but it’s a sentient entity, and I’ve been traveling in it for so long that I have a telepathic connection with it. My moods can influence where it takes me.”

“Wicked,” said Jules. “So, you’re telepathic?” She gazed into his eyes, imagining that they were shagging again. “What am I thinking?”

“No,” he protested. “I don’t do that unless I really need to.”

“Spoil-sport.” Jules reached around to squeeze his wee arse. “Maybe it just knew you needed some lovin.’” A logical thought followed that one, and stricken, Jules said, “Oh, God, did it think you need a kid or something?” She clamped a hand onto her belly.

“No, no, no!” the Doctor said, kissing her. “That’s impossible.”

“Why?”

“Different species, different genes. We don’t even have the same number of chromosomes.”

“Oh!” Jules relaxed, sagging against him. “So, what about that lot back there?”

“What about them?”

“Well, if I shagged one of those blokes, would I have a little fish-baby?”

“Jules!” the Doctor scolded. “You’ve got a one-track mind.”

“Well? Would I?”

“It’d depend on their genetics,” the Doctor said, blushing. “Let’s not test that theory, though, hmm?”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” she said, and they kissed again. “Nothing against those blokes, but you’re more my type.” Which was funny, considering the fish-people might be closer to human than the Doctor. Jules couldn’t help herself; she found the thought of those webbed hands on her body off-putting.

“Speaking of which, we ought to get back,” the Doctor murmured.

Jules steered him back over to one of the trees. “Not just yet,” she said.

(viii)

“Are you all right?” asked Saba.

“What?” Startled, Jules nearly dropped her platter of food.

“You’re very far away,” Saba smiled.

“It’s been quite a morning,” Jules admitted. She turned her gaze to the Doctor, who sat on the other side of the fire pit, engrossed in conversation with Leonidis. Since she and Saba were alone, she felt comfortable blurting out, “I lost my virginity.”

“What’s that?” Saba’s brow furrowed, and she glanced around the beach. “Do you need help looking for it?”

“No, no!” Jules went red in the face. “Okay, that doesn’t translate so well.” She wondered all of a sudden why the people of Nelumbo spoke English. “I had sex. For the first time.” She nodded her chin toward the Doctor. “With him.”

Saba looked like she still didn’t know what Jules was talking about. What euphemism did these people have for sex, anyway?

“Erm, we… made love. Mated. In that lagoon over on the other side of the island.”

“Oh! You coupled with him?”

“Yeah.” Jules pushed her hair back, self-conscious. “I’d never done that before.”

“Really? And you’re how old?”

“Eighteen.”

“That’s so old!” exclaimed Saba. “Why’d you wait so long? I think I’d have died.”

“Uh… eighteen’s actually kind of young where I come from,” said Jules. “And, erm, mating for the first time is kind of a big deal.”

Saba nodded, understanding. She was so pretty, Jules thought—long, dark hair, smoky dark eyes, beautiful features, skin tanned brown by the sun. Like all people of Nelumbo, she was lithe and strong from a lifetime of swimming and physical labor, to say nothing of a lean, protein-rich diet.

“Are you... you know, mated to any of these fellas?” asked Jules. “Like Alena is to Leonidis?”

“No!” laughed Saba, shifting the infant girl. “Only the king takes a mate for life.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s the king.” Saba said this as though it were self-evident.

“You wouldn’t want that?” asked Jules. “You know, just one bloke for your whole life?”

Saba shook her head. “The king and queen can only couple with each other. I’d go mad from boredom with just one man.”

Jules lowered her voice. “Is that why Alena looks... I dunno, kind of angry about something?”

“I don’t know why,” Saba frowned. “She’s usually much happier, but in the past year or so she’s been very difficult. I try to avoid her.”

“Does she love Leonidis, then? Was she forced to be the queen?”

“Oh, no! Everyone knew he’d pick her—the two of them were mad about each other, from what the elders say. Alena’s devoted to Leonidis, but now you can tell she’s angry with him about something, and nobody knows what it is.” Saba checked the baby: still sleeping. “But that’s their concern, not mine.”

Jules nodded, observing the activities on the beach. A gaggle of children—older than toddlers, but younger than the kids who did all the fishing—was playing on the beach, under the watchful supervision of an adolescent boy.

“Does that boy always look after the kids?” asked Jules.

“Everyone does,” Saba told her. “Children are everyone’s responsibility, once they’re weaned and they can walk. We take turns looking after them—the girls usually until they have babies of their own to tend.”

Jules nodded. The communal nursery arrangement struck her as somewhat odd, but it worked for these people: the children were healthy and safe, doted on by the adults. She realized how odd her own upbringing, raised exclusively by two parents, might seem to Saba. Jules admired Nelumbo society, how the blokes took their turns with cooking and babysitting. But on the other hand, these kids had to start taking on adult responsibilities as soon as they were old enough to follow orders, where Jules had had a lot of leeway as a youngster to pursue any activity she pleased. She watched Saba cuddling her baby, thinking of how stigmatized the girl would be on Earth: an unmarried teenage mother. Here, it was not only acceptable but normal. Jules smiled, realizing how social taboos and codes of behavior were determined mainly by context.

(ix)

When they finished making love, they curled together in a nest of linen blankets, listening to the sound of the ocean outside, the occasional sound of voices or laughter from elsewhere in the stone fortress. Beneath these ordinary sounds, Jules could hear—if she placed her ear to the Doctor’s chest—the sound of both hearts beating. Funny how that didn’t bother her—maybe she felt comfortable because his most obvious difference was on the inside.

As a lover he was generous, funny, patient. If he’d guessed at Jules’ inexperience, he’d said nothing about it. He’d made no snide remarks about her having a lot to learn, nor had he made any patronizing efforts to “teach” her. Instead, he’d offered his body as a kind of living classroom, letting Jules learn and explore at her own pace, at her own pleasure. In the relative darkness and privacy of the cave, she’d experimented avidly: different positions, different rhythms, variations in pressure or suction.

Settling down into the first drowsy stages of slumber, Jules thought of the months she’d spent yearning for Joe, hoping that he’d come to see her as more than the gifted tomboy who’d pestered him into setting up a girls’ side. God, how it had stung when he’d fallen for Jess! _Especially since I was the one who recruited her_ , Jules had fumed. Oddly, that resentment had faded since the Harriers had won the final, since the offer of the scholarship to Santa Clara. The hurts of the past smarted far less now that the window to the future had been opened. Jules still felt miffed and disappointed, but those emotions had grown more diffuse, less acute. And this affair, no matter how short-lived, had altered her perceptions: there were plenty of blokes; Joe wasn’t the only one.

Jules smiled, turning into the Doctor’s warmth. While he didn’t exactly remind her of Joe—in temperament, they were poles apart—she could see certain similarities. The most obvious was physical: both men were tall and very thin, dark-haired. _Killer cheekbones_ , Jules thought. What she liked about the Doctor was that he—not unlike Joe—pushed her. He respected her intelligence, but he also challenged her to use her mind, to think about things in new ways, to set aside her preconceptions. Joe had pushed Jules to be a better footballer; likewise, the Doctor was pushing her to learn from her new experiences.

This affair had another advantage: Jules would start uni with some sexual experience behind her. She wouldn’t need to worry or fret about her first time: it was already past. And what better way to end her virginity than with a kind, skilled stranger, with no risk of pregnancy and no strings attached, emotional or otherwise? And it wasn’t like he’d be hanging about at Santa Clara to harass or humiliate her; after this sojourn, she’d likely never see him again. Jules wasn’t in love with him and knew she never would be, but she’d always be grateful to him for the soothing balm on her spirits, as well as this extraordinary opportunity.

Any further ruminations ended when weariness took its toll, and she drifted into untroubled sleep.

(x)

“So, only the king and queen get married here?”

“Not married in the Earth sense, but from what you said, it sounds like they mate for life.”

“And everyone else just shags whoever?”

“Jules, you’re obsessed.”

They were in a small dugout Leonidis had provided, exploring the archipelago; the Doctor had taught Jules how to paddle. She liked the small boat, which had been crafted out of a single tree trunk: long, slim, lightweight, easy to maneuver.

“Can’t help it,” she laughed. “So, if everyone’s shagging everyone else, and nobody’s keeping track of where the kids come from, that means a lot of them are gonna be getting with their own relatives.”

“Oh, no doubt,” the Doctor confirmed.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit… skevvy?” asked Jules.

“Depends who you ask,” the Doctor said, taking one hand off the paddle to shade his eyes. “In some societies, it’s not a taboo, or less of a taboo than it is on Earth. And even on Earth, there’s places where marrying your cousins—and in the past, even your siblings—is perfectly acceptable.”

“Yuck.” Jules wrinkled her nose.

“Places like this where the population is so small, inbreeding is inevitable.”

“Won’t that cause problems with the kids, though?”

“The kids who’re badly affected would die. Natural selection.”

“Is all that why Leonidis calls his kids ‘Alena’s children?’ He acts like they’re not even his.”

“To him, they’re not.”

“What a tosser!”

“These people have no idea where babies come from,” the Doctor said. “They haven’t realized the man’s role in procreation.”

“So, what do they think shagging’s for?”

“Jules!”

“Well?”

“To them, it’s just something that gives them pleasure. It feels good, makes them happy.” Tossing a wicked smile back at Jules, the Doctor said, “Not like you lot, who obsess over it and analyze it half to death.”

Jules used her paddle to flick water at him. “Count your blessings, mate.”

“Hello, what’s that?” the Doctor said, shading his eyes again. “D’you see that?”

Jules shifted, and a flash of light dazzled her eyes.

“The sun’s reflecting off something. Almost looks metallic.” Then she shouted “Metal! Doctor, what’s metal doing here?”

“Let’s have a gander,” he said, and they angled the craft toward open water.

They reached the source of the flash a few moments later. Had the sun been in a different position, they never would have noticed the craft, which lay nearly submerged, floating just beneath the water’s surface.

The Doctor examined the surface of the craft. “It’s a Calypso-class cruiser,” he told Jules. “Very common in this part of the galaxy during this era. They’re used for scientific exploration.” He banged on the metal with his fist. “Hullo, anyone home?”

After a moment, nobody had responded, and the Doctor said, “All right, then.” He fished into a pocket and pulled out the sonic screwdriver. Jules watched as he held it over a large square etched in the metal. With a hissing pop that suggested a vacuum seal had been broken, the square opened, revealing a darkened chasm.

“Hatch,” the Doctor said, pocketing the sonic screwdriver.

“Is this... you know, legal?” asked Jules nervously.

“Trespassing,” the Doctor grinned, lowering himself inside. “Minor offense.” After one last look around, Jules followed.

The drop in temperature struck her right away, and Jules shivered, her skin breaking out in gooseflesh.

“Brr,” she said.

“Climate control,” the Doctor nodded. He touched something on a wall, and the interior of the ship lit up.

“Cor!” said Jules. “A real spaceship!”

“Oi,” the Doctor complained. “What about mine?”

“That’s a blue box,” Jules answered.

“Hello!” the Doctor called. “Anyone about?”

“It’s empty,” Jules remarked, staring at the equipment, the controls, everything exactly as she imagined a spaceship might look.

The Doctor turned in a circle, also examining the vessel’s interior. “Whoever this belongs to didn’t leave in distress,” he said. “There’s no sign of an emergency landing, and the exterior isn’t damaged. The crew submerged in the craft so it wouldn’t be noticed from above, and they sealed the hatch when they left. The ship’s in ‘sleep’ mode—a bit like a computer when you’re not using it.”

“And look, the bed’s made,” Jules observed, pointing to a nearby bunk. “It’s tidy.”

An array of scientific equipment lay on one bench, all organized and labeled.

“Obsessive-compulsive,” laughed Jules.

“No, that’s good scientific technique.” The Doctor went forward, ducking his head beneath the low ceiling. “Here’s the cockpit.” He flicked a switch, and outside glass windows, the clear green water let up.

“Cool!” breathed Jules, laughing at the startled expression on a large fish.

The Doctor flipped off the exterior light. “It’s a small craft,” he said. “Built for a crew of three people at most. Let’s see—we should have a captain’s log somewhere...”

He poked around for a few minutes, then said, “Ah-ha! Found you!” And he toggled a switch.

Jules leaped aside, letting out a loud squawk. A young woman had materialized out of nowhere.

“Who are you?” Jules shrieked.

“It’s a hologram,” the Doctor laughed. “Stand back and listen.”

The image of the woman began to speak. “Professor Delilah Delamere, University of Aldrovanda Seven, captain of the _Nereus_. Day one of the expedition to Nelumbo Minor. Departure at oh-seven hundred hours. All systems stable and—”

The Doctor toggled the switch again, and the image blurred and flickered.

“Hey,” Jules complained.

“Fast forwarding,” the Doctor told her. “Trust me, listening to her rattle down the Standard Protocol would put you to sleep. I’m more interested in what happened when she landed here.”

When he let go of the switch, the image resolved, and the woman began speaking again.

“—touchdown on the surface of Nelumbo Minor at nineteen hundred hours approximate time. Planet surface is ninety-three percent aqueous. Intelligent life-forms not noted, although numerous marine species will be observed and cataloged. Additionally, land-based flora and fauna in a nearby archipelago will be catalogued. My intent is to gather evidence to support Nelumbo Minor’s status as a Category Epsilon planet with the Governing Council of the Aldrovanda System…”

She then launched into a stream of terminology that Jules found incomprehensible: a mix of legalese and technical jargon that made her head ache. She studied the image of the young woman that was projecting out from the computer bank. Delilah Delamere was about thirty, and the lifelike image suggested she must be tall and slim. A wild mane of frizzy hair stuck out from her head in seemingly every direction, the color somewhere between dark blonde and light brown. At one point during the recording of the journal entry, she’d stuffed the hair behind her ears, which were enormous, sticking out comically from the sides of her head. She wasn’t pretty—she was plain, verging on homely—but Jules found her face endearing in its earnest sweetness. She spoke with a suggestion of a lisp.

“And that’s it for one night,” the scientist concluded. “Now, to kip and start again in the morning. Computer, save file.” The image shimmered and vanished.

“Is that all?” asked Jules.

“No, according to this monitor, there’s dozens more entries,” the Doctor said, peering at something that resembled a small computer screen. “But they’re all from over a year ago. The most recent entry was made four months ago, local time.”

“What happened to her?” asked Jules.

“I don’t know.”

“What about the rest of her crew?”

“There wasn’t any,” the Doctor said, his voice soft. “She was alone.”

“Shit,” said Jules. “I hope she’s all right. She seems like a nice kid. Leonidis and his lot didn’t say anything about meeting anyone else from off-world.”

“She may’ve observed them without them knowing about it. I’ll need to scan through the rest of these entries to see if there was any contact,” the Doctor said.

“How long’ll that take?” asked Jules. “I’m freezing.”

“A few hours,” he said, “depending how long each entry is.”

“So what was all that gobbledygook she was going on about?”

“The purpose of her mission was to get this planet categorized as Category Epsilon, which indicates a fragile ecosystem,” the Doctor explained. “It protects the planet from being settled or mined or forested. It’s a basically an order that says ‘hands off.’”

“And what’s Aldo Nova, or whatever it is?”

“Aldrovanda,” he laughed. “It’s the nearest sun with inhabited planets. Aldrovanda Seven’s the seat of government for the system. They claim jurisdiction over the Nelumbo System—although technically, they can’t, now, since Nelumbo Minor’s inhabited.”

“What d’you mean, ‘technically?’”

His expression grew stormy. “Technically in the sense that the people of Nelumbo Minor don’t have any kind of technology or defense to back up a claim of sovereignty,” he said.

“So anyone can come here and take what they want?”

The Doctor looked distressed. “Those spears would be no match for even the most primitive firearms,” he said. “Leonidis and his people would be wiped out.”

“We should warn him!” said Jules.

“Warn him of what? A vague threat he’d have no defense against?”

Jules had an uneasy sensation in her stomach. “Why would that woman come here if she didn’t think there was a threat?” she persisted.

“We’ll have to find her and ask her, or else sort through all these journal entries,” the Doctor said.

“Well, let’s do it. I’ll wrap up in a blanket.”

“Jules—”

“I’m serious, Doctor.” Then, feeling like an idiot, Jules said, “This is the part where you tell me there’s nothing on this planet worth having, innit?”

“No, there is,” he said.

“What is it, then? Oh, my God—have they got oil here?”

“Jules—it couldn’t be more obvious.”

She stared at him. “Water?”

He nodded, “Yes.”

“Shit,” she whispered. Then, “But it’s salt water. Nobody could drink it.”

“It could be desalinated. Easily.”

“So, we should—”

A bright flash of blue light interrupted the conversation, and Jules yelped as a young man appeared out of thin air.

“Delilah?” he said, staring at Jules and the Doctor. “Where’s Delilah? What are you doing here?”

“I know you!” Jules blurted. “Your voice—I’ve heard your voice!”

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

“Is he real?” Jules asked the Doctor. “Or is he a hologram?”

“Of course I’m real, and you’re trespassing on this ship!” the young man said, glaring.

“He teleported here,” the Doctor murmured.

“Seriously? Like _Star Trek_?”

The Doctor heaved a loud, exasperated sigh. He asked the young man, “Who are you?”

“Maxwell Orion, captain of the _Odysseus_ , Aldrovanda Three.”

“Maxwell Orion! Your om-com accidentally patched through to my ship!” The Doctor offered a hand. “I’m the Doctor, and this is Jules Paxton.”

“That was you?” The young man shook hands with both time-travelers, his expression still wary. “I thought there might be some interference due to solar flares.”

“So, what brings you here?” the Doctor beamed, exuding his familiar charming confidence; Jules realized this was how he got people to trust him.

The young man stared around the ship’s interior, appearing close to tears.

“I’m looking for a scientist named Delilah Delamere,” he said. “She was on a research expedition to Nelumbo Minor, and I haven’t heard from her for four months.”

**To be continued…**


	2. A Sea of Honey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit where credit is due: The tile for Part II is stolen from Kate Bush.

**Part II**

_A Sea of Honey_

If Paula had ever met Maxwell Orion, there wouldn’t have been any living with her. Right away, she’d have been on her daughter’s back to catch his eye, chat him up. And Jules had to admit: _not bad_. Maxwell was small, maybe five-five at most, but slim and athletic, clad in very ordinary, practical gear: cargo pants, a short-sleeved shirt halfway buttoned over an undershirt of some type. On his left wrist, he wore a leather cuff, like a gauntlet.

He had a wonderful face, Jules thought: small, the features almost delicate, all framed by a thatch of luxuriant dark brown hair. Beneath thick brows, his eyes were wide and very blue. Despite his wary caution around these two strangers, she could sense kindness and intelligence to him.

“We’ve listened to some of Delilah’s journal entries,” the Doctor said. “She was on a research mission here.”

Maxwell nodded. “She was trying to have Nelumbo Minor designated as a Category Epsilon planet,” he said.

Folding his arms, the Doctor said, “Why? Was she working for someone?”

“Delilah didn’t work for anyone but herself,” Maxwell bristled. “She was a scientist, an environmental biologist. This mission was her idea.” His voice made Jules think of beautiful wooden furniture, and at least now it didn’t sound so desperate, though it did make Maxwell seem younger than his probable age of perhaps twenty-five.

“Why now?” the Doctor asked. “Any special reason? Nelumbo Minor’s been here for a while.”

“She didn’t tell me,” Maxwell said. “I got back to Aldrovanda Seven after a mission of my own, and she was already gone. Nobody at the university seemed to know where she was. That wasn’t like her, being so secretive. I finally tracked down the people who’d accoutered the _Nereus_ for this mission, and they said she’d wanted provisions for tropical expedition.” Maxwell shrugged his slender shoulders. “Nelumbo Minor is the only remotely tropical world within easy travel of Aldrovanda Seven, so it seemed a logical first place to search.”

“Why would she keep something like this from everyone?” the Doctor asked.

“I don’t know,” said Maxwell. “She was usually so open about everything.”

“Was she worried someone might try to stop her?” the Doctor said. “Or at least object to what she was doing?”

Maxwell said, “No, nothing she did was controversial. She was respected among her peers, but she was hardly an intergalactic authority.”

“Did she tell you a lot about her work?” asked Jules.

“We’re always in touch,” Maxwell said. “Until now, I’ve never gone more than a fortnight without hearing from her.”

“Did you know much about her work?” the Doctor asked. “What was her standard procedure? Would she have set up a camp or a field site away from the ship?”

“Only if she was observing an animal population and needed to habituate them,” said Maxwell. “I didn’t know the fine details of her research—I’m an engineer. We met five years ago when I did some repairs on the _Nereus_.” Something wistful crept across his face.

“Were you friends, or more than that?” asked Jules.

“We were lovers for a while.” He spoke with candor, not a trace of self-consciousness. “That ended a year ago. We still keep in touch. I worry about Delilah—her concentration is apt to wander. She’s had attention problems since she was a child. It’s not unusual for her to focus on one thing to such an extent that she neglects her own safety and health.”

“She might’ve switched off her om-com,” the Doctor said.

“Why?” asked Maxwell, baffled.

“If she’s trying to habituate an animal population to her presence, she wouldn’t want the noise upsetting them.”

“She can set it to vibrate.”

“Some species can pick up vibrations.”

Maxwell sighed. “And she might’ve had an accident in that swamp somewhere—bitten by a snake, stung by an insect—”

“She was a field scientist; she’d have had a med kit with her,” the Doctor said. “Which includes a universal antivenin.”

Maxwell looked at the Doctor more closely. “You know a lot.”

“I’m a scientist. It’s my job.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“Exploring,” the Doctor said. “I travel all over, but I’ve never been to Nelumbo Minor before. Jules and I found the ship, and we were trying to learn what happened to Delilah when you teleported in.”

Maxwell still looked suspicious. He raised his arm and a flap on his wrist band opened up. Inside was some kind of device with tiny buttons and blinking lights.

“What’s that?” asked Jules.

“Bio scan,” the Doctor said. He didn’t sound happy

“What?” laughed Jules.

“Your DNA is ancient!” Maxwell stared at Jules, mouth agape. “Where are you from?”

“Earth,” she said.

“According to this…” Maxwell tapped a button. “Your DNA is over three thousand years old!”

“You’re off your trolley!” scoffed Jules. “I’m only eighteen!”

The Doctor murmured, “It’s the fifty-first century, Jules.”

“Yeah, right!” Then she remembered the Doctor’s ship could travel in time. “Are we… in the future?”

“Yes.” The Doctor told Maxwell, “Jules is from Earth in the twenty-first century.”

Maxwell was scanning the Doctor, and he seemed to have forgotten Jules. “What are you?” he said. “You have no species designation.”

“I’m a Time Lord.”

“Time Lords are extinct,” Maxwell said, his suspicion deepening.

“I’m the last one.”

Maxwell lowered his arm. “Do I look like an idiot?”

“D’you think I’d joke about something like that?”

Jules glanced at the Doctor. He looked so serious and old all of a sudden.

“All the Time Lords were wiped out in a war…” Maxwell faltered. “Oh, God,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. You must… you must be…”

“The only survivor,” the Doctor confirmed.

Jules stared at him openly now. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

“You might have told her that before you copulated with her,” Maxwell shot, glaring at the Doctor. “She has your DNA in her vaginal tract.”

Jules hauled back and smacked him across the face so hard he staggered and fell against the console.

“Jules!” the Doctor reproached.

“Mind your own bloody business, you pervvy tosser!”

Max straightened up. “Sorry,” he told Jules. “I thought you should know—”

“Never mind what you think!” Jules said. “I’m eighteen; I can decide for myself who to trust!” She squeezed the Doctor’s hand. “I’m sorry about your planet,” she said. “That’s so terrible.”

A dozen expressions warred on his face: grief, guilt, embarrassment, discomfiture. She could tell he’d rather have told her about his planet in private, without an audience.

“Right,” the Doctor said, wrenching the conversation to another topic. “Delilah. We should try to find her.”

“There’s only four landmasses of any substance on this planet,” said Maxwell. “They’re pretty small. It shouldn’t take long to search them.”

“Do you have a ship?” asked the Doctor.

“In orbit over the planet,” said Maxwell, relaxing by a fraction.

“I thought as much,” the Doctor nodded. “Short-range teleport?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s that mean?” asked Jules.

“He can teleport between here and the ship but not between here and another planet.”

“That is so wicked,” said Jules. “An actual teleport?”

“She’s never seen one before?” asked Maxwell, his forehead wrinkling.

“It’ll be a couple of centuries on Earth before teleports are developed,” the Doctor said.

Maxwell stared at Jules. “How do you get around, then?”

“Walk, drive, take the Tube,” she laughed.

“Incredible.”

“Well, come on, let’s go above,” the Doctor said. “It’s a bit chilly here for me and Jules.”

They climbed the ladder to the hatch. Out in the bright sunlight, Maxwell scanned the sea around the vessel, shading his eyes.

“It’s hot,” he said.

“Tropical,” the Doctor nodded.

“What’s that?” Maxwell pointed.

“A dugout,” said Jules. “Leonidis loaned it to us.”

“Who?”

“Leonidis, the king of the local tribe.”

Maxwell looked gobsmacked. “Nelumbo Minor is inhabited?”

“Yes!” the Doctor laughed.

“But—all our intelligence and data suggest—”

“It’s a small population, and technologically not very advanced,” the Doctor said. “Very easy for them to slip under the radar.”

“I wonder if Delilah had any contact with them.”

“If you want, you’re welcome to go through her journal entries, but it’s too cold down there for us,” the Doctor said. “Or, we can go ask Leonidis. That might be faster.”

“No, I’m going to scan her journal entries,” Maxwell said. “It shouldn’t take long. Why don’t you two wait out here?”

“Works for me,” said Jules, glad to be out in the warm air. Her feet had turned purple.

She and the Doctor left the hatch open, sitting on the top of the ship and soaking their feet in the tepid water. Maxwell went below, and after a few moments, they heard the lisping murmur of Delilah’s voice.

“What do you think happened to her?” Jules whispered.

“There’s no telling, but it’s very odd for a scientist to abandon her ship without reporting back,” the Doctor said, also keeping his voice down. “She might be out in another archipelago, observing animals in the field, but if so, why not move her ship closer to where she was working?”

“Could she teleport, too?”

“Yes, but I don’t think she’d risk having anyone in the tribe stumble across the ship,” the Doctor said. “Look how easily we found it today. It’s possible something might’ve happened to her—even someone so experienced could’ve had an accident or fallen ill, and there wouldn’t have been anyone to help her.”

“You think Maxwell might want to… I dunno, look for her body?”

“After four months in the steaming tropics, I can’t imagine there’d be much left of her body to find,” the Doctor said.

“Eew.” Jules wrinkled her nose.

“Something about this whole business feels very off,” the Doctor said. “Delilah was working on an ordinary research project, but for some reason she didn’t want anybody else to know about it.”

They sat on the ship for a while longer, and after perhaps thirty minutes, Maxwell climbed up and joined them.

“Nothing,” he said. “She spent four months making notes on the flora and fauna—underwater, in the air, on land. It was all a bit mind-numbing, actually. She did make a note of the humanoid tribe, but she didn’t say she’d communicated with them. I think she observed them without letting them know she was there—she was good at things like that.”

“What’d her last entry say?” the Doctor asked.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Maxwell reported. “She planned to make some more observations of the bird species, to see if any of them migrated among the landmasses.”

“In that case,” the Doctor said, pulling himself up into a crouch and swinging a leg into the dugout, “we should talk to Leonidis. Captain Orion, why don’t you come with us?”

“Are they hostile?” he asked.

“No, not in the least,” the Doctor said. Jules had climbed in behind him, and he said, “Come on… there’s room for all three of us.”

(ii)

The arrival of yet another outsider sent the Nelumbians into a tizzy of excitement, but Leonidis remained calm, inscrutable.

“She didn’t come here,” he said after listening to Maxwell’s story.

Alena looked displeased, her girlish round forehead puckering into an ugly frown.

“She was spying on us?” she asked.

“Observing you,” the Doctor said.

“What, like a flock of birds? I don’t like this, you people coming here in your strange machines and looking down on us like we’re fish, or a nest of snakes!”

Maxwell offered, “She meant you no harm. Delilah had utmost respect for the beings of other worlds. She wouldn’t have wanted to intrude on your privacy and autonomy.”

Alena made a scornful noise, indicating she didn’t believe any of it.

“We’re sorry we can’t be of any more help,” said Leonidis. Something in his tone of voice made it clear that he considered the matter closed.

Maxwell stared around the inside of the rock fortress as if expecting Delilah to materialize out of the walls. Jules felt sorry for him—she sensed that his love for Delilah still persisted.

“Thank you, Your Excellence,” he finally responded.

“Will you join us for the evening meal?”

“No, thank you,” said Maxwell. “You’re very kind, but I want to search the other islands before I leave Nelumbo Minor.”

“Very well.” Leonidis didn’t seem insulted that Maxwell had refused the invitation.

Jules and the Doctor followed the young man out to the beach. Nearby, some children were at work, skinning and gutting fish, and they looked up with big, curious eyes at the strangers. Jules thought that they’d probably never seen someone wearing so many clothes.

“If by some miracle she turns up here, have her send me a message from her ship,” Maxwell asked the Doctor.

“I’ll do that,” the Doctor promised. “Good luck. Will you come back here?”

“No, I have the distinct feeling I’m not welcome.” Maxwell barked a short, nervous laugh. “I’ll check the other islands, and if I don’t find anything, I’m going home. Maybe if I file a missing persons report on Aldrovanda Seven, that’ll shake up one of her colleagues enough to tell me what she was doing. If they even know.”

“Good luck,” Jules told him, sorry to see him leaving. For all her earlier anger, she still felt a great deal of sympathy for him, anxiously searching for a woman who might well be dead.

“Thank you, both of you, for your help,” said Maxwell.

“It was our pleasure,” said the Doctor. “I just wish we could’ve given you more.”

With a last smile and a nod, he touched a button on his wrist strap, vanishing in a blue flash that took away Jules’ breath.

“Wish I had one of those,” she said. “I could get home for the holidays a lot faster when I’m at uni. It’s like forever from London to Santa Clara. Will they really have those on Earth, someday?”

“Far into your future,” the Doctor nodded. “In your great-grandchildren’s time.”

“If I even have kids,” laughed Jules. She stared at the firepit, heaving a hungry sigh. “God, I hope they hurry up and finish cooking,” she said. “I’m starving.”

(iii)

Dinner consisted of exactly the same food, and Jules wondered how these people could bear eating the same fish and plants day after day. The Doctor didn’t seem to mind at all, laughing and talking to the Nelumbians about the best way to build a dugout and bragging about some fish he’d caught somewhere on another planet.

Jules had just begun to feel mellow—and a bit randy—when a loud mechanical noise shattered the peace on the beach.

“What’s all this, then?” The Doctor jumped to his feet, scanning the skies. Jules had come to recognize that he had two modes: light-hearted on one hand, but serious and competent on the other. He called to Leonidis.

“Back—everyone get back!”

The king had risen to his feet also, and now he gestured everyone away from the water.

“What is it?” screamed Saba, clapping her hands over her ears.

“A ship is landing!” the Doctor shouted.

The Nelumbians huddled together, terrified. The high-pitched noise rose, and then a deafening explosion rocked the island, a concussive blast that knocked everyone off their feet.

“What’s that?” Jules yelled.

“Sonic wave!” the Doctor yelled back. “From the ship hitting the planet’s atmosphere!”

“So, why didn’t they notice when Delilah’s ship landed?”

“She was more subtle about it!” the Doctor said, almost screaming to make himself heard.

Jules could see the ship now, a silver-black oblong in the sky, growing bigger with every second.

“Who are they?” she said. “That can’t be Maxwell’s ship!”

“No, he’d never make a landing with so little finesse,” the Doctor scowled.

As the ship dropped from the sky it began to slow—Jules could see air shooting at high pressure from the ship’s underside to slow the vessel’s descent, churning the ocean into a froth. Then, light as a feather, the ship touched down on the water’s surface and floated there. It stretched as long as a city block: not sleek and beautiful like Delilah’s little cruiser, but dreary, industrial-ugly, utilitarian.

A hatch in the side opened, and a smaller vessel emerged, some kind of motorized boat.

“Landing party,” the Doctor murmured. He strode toward the shore, Jules beside him. A moment later, Leonidis and Alena joined them.

As the motor boat neared the beach, a man inside held up one hand. The vessel stopped, and he leapt out, splashing through the surf to the dry sand.

“Good grief!” he shouted. “There’s people here!” Staring at the foursome, he said, “Who in blazes are you?”

Leonidis stepped forward. “I am Leonidis, King of Nelumbo Minor.”

“King?” the newcomer sputtered. “Nelumbo Minor is uninhabited!”

“Not so much,” the Doctor said dryly. “And you are—?”

“Driscoll Blaine,” the man told him, offering a hand. “Captain of the _Tobriner_ , and Commander of the Aldrovanda Nine Royal Mineralogical Expedition Force.”

“That’s quite a mouthful,” the Doctor smiled.

With an ironic roll of his eyes, the man said, “Well, I must observe official protocol. Just Driscoll, please. And these are my crewmates—Lavena, my first lieutenant; Riona, my chief geologist; and my navigator, Ferrell.”

Jules found herself staring, fascinated. Lavena was black. For some odd reason, Jules hadn’t expected to see black people in outer space. Then she told herself not to be stupid: there must be people of many skin tones all across the universe. Riona, the second female, was much lighter, middle-aged and tough looking. Ferrell had caramel-colored skin, and he wore his long silver hair in a careless tail.

Driscoll was perhaps forty, sandy-haired and blue-eyed, his eyelashes white, like a redhead’s, features roundish and almost doughy. He was shorter than the Doctor, perhaps five-ten, but broader through the chest and shoulders. His clothes were indistinguishable from those of his subordinates: a hip-length silver tunic over black trousers and heavy black boots. They all wore thick black tool belts around their waists, and Jules didn’t miss the formidable-looking guns that each one carried.

The Doctor said, “Driscoll, then. I’m the Doctor, and this is my companion, Jules Paxton. And might I introduce King Leonidis of Nelumbo Minor, and his lovely wife, Queen Alena?”

The _Tobriner_ ’s crew all made a deep bow in the king and queen’s direction. “My apologies for the rough landing,” Driscoll said. “We didn’t think anyone lived here.”

In his deep voice, Leonidis asked, “Why have you come to Nelumbo Minor?”

“We’re on an exploratory mission from the royal family of Aldrovanda Nine,” Driscoll announced. “Scans from orbit have revealed vast amounts of atillax in the planet’s crust. We’re here to make a closer examination, extract some samples, and if the data support the preliminary tests, to begin mining operations.”

Jules glanced at the Doctor, dismayed.

“Your permit will need to be re-negotiated,” the Doctor told Driscoll, “to take these people’s welfare into account.”

Driscoll ran a frustrated hand through his thinning hair. In a low voice, he muttered, “Doctor, I don’t have loads of time, here—I’m on a very tight schedule.”

“There are intelligent beings on this planet,” the Doctor argued. “They have a say in the future of their own world. You can’t just start drilling without first assessing the risks to their lives—Article 203 of the Shadow Proclamation.”

Driscoll studied the Nelumbians, his facial muscles tight, eyes worried. Jules guessed that the Doctor had caught him on some legality. Driscoll turned his gaze back to the Doctor.

“Who are you?” he said. “You’re not local; anyone can see that. You must be from off-world.”

“I’m a traveler and a scientist,” the Doctor said. “Jules is my assistant, and we’ve been examining the planet’s wildlife.”

“Are you authorized to speak on behalf of these people?”

“They speak for themselves, but I feel it’s my responsibility, as a scientist, to warn them of the potential risks involved with drilling, and to advise them of their legal rights. I’m sorry, Driscoll, but you can’t drill here without their permission.” Even skinny and almost naked, the Doctor’s words carried unmistakable moral weight.

An uncomfortable silence followed. The Doctor turned to Leonidis. “As the leader of the planet, this decision is yours.”

Leonidis told them, “I’ll make my decision after I’ve heard what both of you have to say. Come with me.”

They followed him back to the rock fortress. Leonidis dismissed everyone except the Doctor, Jules, Driscoll and his party. They all sat cross-legged the floor, Alena at her mate’s side. Leonidis nodded for Driscoll to begin.

“Your Excellence, I’m on a fairly serious expedition from Aldrovanda Nine,” Driscoll opened. “The Aldrovanda System consists of twenty-one planets around its sun, three of which are inhabited—Aldrovanda Three, Aldrovanda Seven and Aldrovanda Nine.” He opened his wrist strap, showing a hologram of his solar system in miniature. Alena gasped out loud, but Leonidis didn’t even blink.

“Sorcery!” the queen hissed.

“It’s just an image, a picture in the air,” the Doctor reassured her. “There’s nothing magical about it.” He peered at the hologram, squinting. For one instant, Jules thought he looked unbearably sad. A moment later, his expression became more neutral.

Driscoll said, “As you can see, Aldrovanda Nine is a fair distance from the sun. Most of the population is clustered around the equatorial region because the regions near the two poles are too cold to sustain life.” Jules took a closer look, seeing that the planet appeared very large, blue-gray in color, with thick, white caps at either pole. “Our main source of fuel has always been atillax—it burns cleanly, and it’s versatile. We use it to power everything.”

“I see,” said Leonidis. Jules wondered how much of this he really understood.

“But we’ve exhausted all our natural stores of it,” said Driscoll. “We’ve been looking elsewhere for a while—Castor was a good source. But five years ago, the sun of Castor went supernova, and the planet was burnt to a cinder.”

“I see,” Leonidis said again, nodding.

“We’ve conducted scans of other planets in the star systems nearest the Aldrovanda System, and Nelumbo Minor is our best option. Until today, we didn’t realize the planet was inhabited.”

“What is this… atillax?” asked Leonidis.

“It’s a mineral, a sort of… a soft rock, usually deep beneath the surface.” Driscoll patted his hand on the rough stone floor. “You’d have to dig pretty far down to find it. It burns easily, without releasing any dangerous atmospheric gasses.” Eyes bright, almost pleading, he said, “Your Excellence, the government of Aldrovanda Nine would be prepared to give you anything you need, anything you want, in exchange for drilling rights on this planet.”

Leonidis told him, “There’s nothing we want from you. Everything we need, the ocean provides.”

“The royal family is very wealthy.”

“Maybe that wealth has meaning for people of Aldrovanda Nine, but it’s nothing to us. Riches won’t make the fish leap into our nets any faster.” Leonidis turned his head. “What are your thoughts, Doctor?”

“There’s a lot of risks associated with digging for anything,” the Doctor said. “Especially because Driscoll’s crew would need to drill underwater. That would disturb the seabed, and the food chain in the ocean could be disrupted. Even if the drilling is done on the other side of the planet from here, there’d be an impact. And if hazardous chemicals leak into the water, your whole food supply could be poisoned.”

Driscoll interrupted, “Our techniques are very safe, Doctor! There hasn’t been a major accident—”

“Yeah, right!” scoffed Jules. “Isn’t what they always say? Tell that to the oil companies on Earth that dump a tanker full of crude into the ocean!”

Driscoll pulled himself upright. “We have an excellent safety record. We could set up a hundred drilling stations on this planet, with minimal impact to its ecosystem.”

The Doctor shook his head. “The web of life is very delicate here. Even one drilling station would have an effect, and the damage would be irreparable. These people don’t have any other resources to fall back on.”

“The people of Aldrovanda Nine don’t have anything to fall back on, either!” Driscoll shot. He was pleading openly now. “Our fuel sources are so low that within five years, people will start to freeze and starve to death—13 billion of them!”

Jules asked, “Have you looked anywhere else? There’s a lot of other planets in this solar system, innit?”

The geologist, Riona, spoke up. “This is the only planet with atillax in its crust,” she said. “It needs the rights combination of temperature and pressure to form.”

The Doctor said to Driscoll, “Your ship is hardly state-of-the-art. And the older the ship, the greater the risk something will go wrong.”

“It was completely overhauled and upgraded just last year.” Driscoll projected a hologram of the vessel.

An expression passed across the Doctor’s face, so fleeting that Jules couldn’t read it. Dismay? Sadness? Shock?

“The _Tobriner_?” he said. “A gamma-class ship? Crew of what, seventy, seventy-five? Small-scale drilling capacity? And when you find a substantial source of atillax, you’d send for the bigger, omicron-class rigs, the ones that can mine thousands of tons in a month.”

“The _Tobriner_ may not look like much on the outside, but the inside is pristine,” said Driscoll. “It’s never been involved with a single drilling mishap.”

“And you’ll have vats of chemicals on that ship for processing the atillax,” the Doctor said. “Hundred of thousands of gallons on the bigger ships, caustic enough to burn through solid rock. If any of that leached into the water…”

“It wouldn’t happen.”

“You can’t guarantee that,” the Doctor maintained.

“So, what’s everyone on Aldrovanda Nine supposed to do?” asked Driscoll. “Freeze to death?”

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said. “This is what happens when you become too reliant on one source of energy.”

“Do you think we’ve never tried to develop other sources?” Driscoll asked. “We’ve tried everything, Doctor. We’re too far from the sun to make solar energy feasible—we barely get enough sunlight to grow crops, and we’re already importing food from off-world. All our nuclear reactors are working at full capacity, and they’re still only providing a fraction of the planet’s needs. We’ve tried everything—thermal power, wind power, hydrogen-based fuels—and the results are limited at best. It’ll be decades before any of them can be developed into large-scale use, and we don’t have decades. We need to find a solution, _now_.”

“And sacrificing these people’s lives is part of that solution?”

“Every effort will be made to—”

Leonidis decided he’d heard enough. “No effort will be made,” he said. “My apologies, Captain Driscoll, but I can’t allow you to poison our waters.”

Lavena, Driscoll’s first lieutenant, said, “Would relocation be possible? It’s such a small population here—they could be moved to another planet if Nelumbo Minor became uninhabitable.”

Jules couldn’t believe the woman’s caviler mentality, but then she thought that if Earth were in similar dire straits, she’d do anything within her power to allow the survival of humanity.

“Look at them,” the Doctor said. “They’ve evolved to this world, to one specific environment. Name one planet within traveling distance where these people could thrive.”

Driscoll’s crew looked taken aback.

Driscoll asked Leonidis, “Won’t you at least consider…?”

“No.”

A look passed among Driscoll’s crewmates.

“Right.” The captain hopped to his feet, unholstering his gun. Before Jules and the Doctor could react, the other three had done the same. “We came here under a peaceful pretext, not even imagining this world was inhabited, and our attempts at negotiation have been rebuffed. We have authorization to conduct mining operations on this planet, a royal charter granted by the government of Aldrovanda Nine. I’m sorry, Doctor, but your interference here forces me to arrest you and your companion as enemies of the state.”

“On your bike!” Jules shouted, but Ferrell and Riona had grabbed her arms, shoving their cold guns against her spine. “Doctor!”

“Leave her out of this!” the Doctor said, struggling angrily against Driscoll. “I only brought her along with me—she’s done nothing.”

“We’re sorry, but you’re both interfering with the business of the crown,” said Driscoll. “Under the statutes of Aldrovanda Nine, you’ll both be executed at dawn tomorrow.”

“No!” yelled Jules. “That’s not fair!”

Lavena had seized Alena. She told Leonidis, “Warn your warriors not to try anything stupid. The queen is our hostage until the executions tomorrow. Any interference on your part, and she’ll die with them.”

Alena shot her captors a murderous look, but she was powerless as the four Aldrovandans prodded their captives from the cave out to the beach and into the motorized boat.

(iv)

“If we weren’t being executed tomorrow, I’d kill you myself.”

“Jules—”

“You sodding great prat!” Jules exploded. “I _trusted_ you! I went with you cos I trusted you! And now I’m gonna die, and it’s all your bloody fault!”

“Jules, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, save it!” She seethed, folding her arms and sinking down into a corner of the cell. The dreary little containment area measured maybe six meters square, with a small sink and toilet its only amenities. Driscoll had tossed in a blanket: there was no bed.

The reality of the situation began to sink in. Jules was going to be executed on spurious, trumped-up charges, and there was nothing she could do about it, no higher power to which she could appeal. She was going to die here on an alien planet, without ever seeing her parents, or Jess, or Joe, ever again.

Jules began weeping in great, convulsive gasps. “Oh, God, why’d I ever go with you?”

She felt his hands on her shoulders, and he sat beside her. “Shh, Jules, come here.”

She smacked his arm. “Piss off!”

He wouldn’t be deterred, enfolding Jules in his arms with soft murmurs of comfort. Jules struggled wildly, then relaxed into his embrace, crying all over his shoulder.

“I’m eighteen; I don’t wanna die!” she bawled.

“Shh. Does your head hurt?” He was massaging her temples.

“I don’t—” Jules jolted when she felt the Doctor, incredibly, inside her mind.

_Jules listen to me_ , he said.

_What?_ she thought. _What’re you doing in my head?_

_The cell’s probably monitored_ , he said. _This is safer than talking. Jules, it’s all right! You’re not going to die, I promise you that!_

_How d’you know?_

_Because there’s something I know that Driscoll doesn’t._

_What’s that?_

_Tomorrow_ , he promised, and removed his fingers from her temples.

Jules raised her head and stared at him.

“Better?” he smiled.

“Erm… I guess,” she said.

The Doctor picked up the blanket wrapped it around both of them.

“Good,” he said. “Try to get some sleep. Here, lean against me.”

Jules didn’t want to sleep—after all, despite the Doctor’s reassurances, this might be her last few hours of life—but there was so little to do, she realized, she might as well rest and hope that the Doctor knew what he was doing. She curled into his warmth and much to her amazement, fell into untroubled slumber.

(v)

Whatever the Doctor had planned, Jules felt it would be best not to seem too complacent.

“Executin’ us without a trial, or even any bloody evidence,” she grumbled at Riona, who was leading them out to the beach.

“Actually, we do have evidence.” Driscoll came striding up alongside them, his face decidedly unfriendly. “We found the _Nereus_ not too far from here,” he said. “You’re in league with that infernal do-gooder, Delilah Delamere.”

“We are not!” yelled Jules.

“How else could you have gotten to Nelumbo Minor?” Driscoll demanded. “We didn’t find any other ships. You’re all scientists; you must be working with her! Flying about the cosmos, declaring everything she finds off-limits to development! She’s the worst kind of pacifist—she’ll put the life of any mollusk over the lives of billions of people!”

“Yeah, well if everyone on Aldrovanda Nine’s like you lot, who can blame her?” Jules sneered.

Ignoring the insult, Driscoll said, “And that’s all the evidence I need that you’re interfering in state affairs. The punishment is death.”

The Doctor and Jules were made to stand with their backs to the water. Nearby, the Nelumbians huddled, shaking and terrified. Lavena, Riona, and Ferrell formed a firing squad, facing the two condemned prisoners. Jules fought to keep her legs steady.

“Excuse me,” the Doctor said. “I believe we’re entitled to a last request.”

“You’re entitled to nothing!” Driscoll snarled.

“Actually, according to Article 1087, Subsection C of the Shadow Proclamation, all condemned prisoners are entitled to one last request.”

“And Clause One of Subsection C states that last requests exclude a stay of execution,” Driscoll retorted.

“Oh, yes, quite,” the Doctor said. He radiated the calm serenity of a man fully prepared to meet his demise. “It’s nothing I want for myself. In fact, it’s something I want for you.”

Driscoll stared at him, his pugnacious chin relaxing as his features took on a look of complete befuddlement. “Come again?”

“For you,” the Doctor smiled. “If you could do just one thing for yourself before we die.”

“And what’s that?”

“Check your news feeds from home.”

“What?” Driscoll sputtered.

“That’s my last request,” the Doctor said. “For you to look at the news feeds from Aldrovanda Nine.”

“Right off his rocker, that one,” Lavena muttered.

“Seems harmless enough a request,” Ferrell chuckled. “Maybe he’s hoping Queen Mairead has granted a universal pardon.”

Driscoll sighed, rolling his eyes slightly, but whatever this Shadow Proclamation was, he seemed reluctant to disregard it. He motioned to his three subordinates.

“At ease,” he said, and then he flipped open his wrist gauntlet. Jules watched, holding her breath, as a hologram of a computer screen was projected into the air. She could see lines of text scrolling across it. Driscoll began reading, then his face froze, his breath rushed out in a wheezing gasp, and he stood immobilized, staring at the image of the blue screen.

“Driscoll? What is it?” asked Lavena, her voice urgent.

“No,” he whispered. “No, it can’t be possible.”

The Doctor reached out and took Jules by the hand.

“There’s been a coup.” Driscoll’s voice shook. “Queen Mairead and the entire royal family have been assassinated. The government’s been overthrown and is now in the hands of rebels.”

“Declan’s rebels?” asked Riona, blanching. “But how… he’s… he was dead!”

“All servants of the crown are now considered wanted criminals,” Driscoll said. “There’s a price on our heads. Declan’s bounty hunters are looking for us.” He turned accusing eyes to the Doctor. “You _knew_ about this!” he exploded. “You must be in league with them! How else could you have known this?”

“I know your history,” the Doctor said. “The history of the Aldrovanda System.”

“History? It’s happening right now!”

“It’s history to me,” the Doctor said.

“Traitor!”

“Time Lord.”

“You expect me to believe that?” sneered Driscoll. “The Time Lords are extinct!”

“There was one survivor,” the Doctor said. Steel edged his voice, and his habitual _joie de vivre_ had fallen away, revealing something ancient and powerful and terrifying: not a god, but a monster. “Only one survivor, Driscoll, and you’re looking at him! The man who wiped out the entire Dalek race! You really think I’d let a two-bit space pirate like you slow me down?”

Driscoll didn’t answer. He aimed his deadly-looking blaster straight at Jules. The Doctor leaped in front of her, but she held her breath, wondering if this would, in fact, be the end.

Nothing happened. A funny, hollow clicking noise echoed across the beach, and Jules dared to peek around the Doctor’s shoulder. Driscoll and his subordinates were staring at their guns, which appeared to not be working.

“Oh, dear,” the Doctor smiled. “Seems like someone’s disarmed all your weapons, doesn’t it?”

“How could you… you’ve been locked up for the past twelve hours!” Driscoll shouted.

In a shimmering blue flash, Maxwell Orion materialized on the beach. Addressing Driscoll he grinned, “Hullo, old friend.” He told Jules and the Doctor, “I was on my way back to Aldrovanda Three when the _Tobriner_ blinked on my radar screen, and I knew this bastard couldn’t be up to any good.”

“ _Orion!_ ” Driscoll snarled.

“The pigeons’ve come home to roost, eh Driscoll?” Maxwell had a look of jubilation about him. “I’d get moving if I were you—Declan’s men are on the hunt for the _Tobriner_. A crew of seventy-five will bring in a fat bounty. And there’s someone who could very easily tip them off about your current location.”

“You piece of shit,” Driscoll breathed. “You’re in league with Declan!”

“The people of Aldrovanda Nine had no choice!” Maxwell shot. “Either they revolted, or they waited for death while the royal family and the bureaucrats holed themselves up in a fortress with the planet’s last resources! The people’s biggest mistake was waiting too long for the queen and the government to save them! They should’ve acted sooner—a lot sooner!”

“You’ll pay for this!” Driscoll hissed.

“I don’t think you’re in any position to make threats,” Maxwell told him. Everyone on the beach watched the two men, riveted. “And as much as I’d like to watch Declan’s men make you suffer, I’m willing to bargain with you for one thing. Tell me what happened to Delilah Delamere, and if she’s still alive, I’ll give you a head start out of this system.”

“We found Delilah’s ship,” said Driscoll. “There was no sign of her. We have no idea where she is.”

“Liar!” said Maxwell. “She opposed Queen Mairead’s plans to exploit any world within traveling distance! Why wouldn’t you kill her?”

“We didn’t kill her,” said Driscoll through gritted teeth.

The Doctor tried to defuse the mounting tension. “Actually, Maxwell, the _Tobriner_ only landed yesterday. I doubt if Driscoll’s crew had anything to do with Delilah’s disappearance—she’s been missing for four months.”

But Maxwell ignored this; he seemed to be teetering on the edge of nervous hysteria. He shoved Driscoll, demanding, “Where is she? _Where is she?_ What’ve you done to her, you thieving, murdering swine?”

Enraged, Driscoll swung his fist, clocking Maxwell in the jaw and sending him staggering to the sand.

“Stop it!” the Doctor shouted. “This won’t solve anything!”

Driscoll turned to the nearest Nelumbian guard, yanking the boy’s spear from his hands.

“Max, look out!” screamed Jules.

Maxwell had clambered to his feet, and he stared up, horrified.

“No!” the Doctor yelled. “No, don’t!”

Driscoll cocked back his arm and threw the spear like a javelin. The weapon shot through the air and took Maxwell square in the chest. He fell back into the sand, blood gushing everywhere.

“Doctor, help him!” sobbed Jules.

Maxwell stared up at the sky, feeble hands clutching the shaft that impaled him through the chest. Jules saw him mouth the word “Delilah” before his head lolled to one side.

Jules turned her glare to Driscoll. “You monster,” she whispered.

In a twinkling, Leonidis and his men had Driscoll’s crew surrounded, spears at their necks.

“Don’t,” the Doctor said. “Please, don’t.”

Eyes burning like green embers in his face, Leonidis asked, “Why should we let them live?”

“Because they’re not worth having blood on your hands.” The Doctor said, “Lavena, go to the ship and fetch Queen Alena. When she’s safely back here, we’ll let you go. You’ll be exiles for the rest of time. Now, go.”

Lavena knew better to argue with that voice, that expression. On shaking legs, she went to the motorboat and returned to the _Tobriner_. Less than seven minutes later she returned, the queen beside her, unharmed.

The Doctor told Driscoll, “Go. I don’t care where you and your crew take refuge, but don’t ever set foot on this world again.”

Numb and silent, Driscoll and his subordinates returned to their ship.

“Everyone, get back,” the Doctor said. “Cover your ears.”

With a mighty, thunderous explosion, the _Tobriner_ lifted off. The sea churned wildly as the vessel rose into the air, but then calmed as the ship gained more altitude. It shrank as it grew further and further away, until it was a tiny speck in the sky, and then, with a rumbling echo of thunder, it was gone.

(vi)

Maxwell’s body was burned on a pyre at the tip of a long spit of sand. The Nelumbians waited until low tide to ignite the kindling. Jules, exhausted and fretful, didn’t understand the delay until the Doctor explained it to her.

“When the tide comes back in, it’ll wash the ashes out to sea.”

“Oh.” She was torn up with grief, too numb to feel much besides a dull interest.

“You should get some rest,” the Doctor said kindly, looking up at the sun.

“Can’t we just go home?” asked Jules.

“Not yet,” the Doctor said. “The festival is tonight. We should stay through that, at least, to be polite.”

They walked along the beach together, alone, not far from where they’d first discovered Fauna with her injury, when all this had started.

“So, you know Aldrovanda’s history?” asked Jules after a pace.

“Yeah.” The Doctor’s arms were folded, and he was hugging his elbows. Days in the bright sun had brought out a lot of freckles on his face and back. When he inhaled and exhaled, Jules could make out the faint ridges made by his ribs. “I’d forgotten about it, but when Driscoll showed me the hologram of the _Tobriner_ , it all came back.”

“So, what happened on Aldrovanda Nine? Did the coup solve anything? Who was that Declan bloke they were all going on about?”

“The coup didn’t solve a thing. It was a last, desperate act by desperate people. Declan wasn’t just any rebel; he was the queen’s bastard half-brother. He wasn’t interested in saving the people or the planet, only in his own personal vendetta.”

“Oh, no!”

“He seized power and put the planet under martial law. He had no political skills at all and mismanaged the planet’s remaining resources. Within two years, people began dying—first by the hundreds, then by the thousands and millions. Aldrovanda Nine became a cold, dead wasteland.”

“And Maxwell was working for Declan? Didn’t he know?”

“I think Maxwell was sympathetic to the plight of the people on Aldrovanda Nine, and he naïvely believed that Declan could solve the planet’s problems. You can hardly fault him for having compassion, even if his judgment was lacking.”

“So, what’ll happen to Driscoll’s crew?”

“They’ll take refuge on the planet Muscaria,” the Doctor said, “and spend the rest of their lives as exiles. Lavena will be the last survivor.”

“And none of that can change? You couldn’t have warned Driscoll yesterday?”

“Fixed points,” the Doctor said. “Nothing can stop it. It would’ve been wrong of me to interfere—that might’ve had serious repercussions.”

“But you said before that time was in flux here,” said Jules.

“It still is,” the Doctor told her. “That hasn’t changed. The fluctuation is still around one point, and I haven’t found what that point is—yet.”

“So, that’s why you wanna stay here,” Jules realized. “Not cos you’d bite your arm off for more of that fish.”

The Doctor laughed. “Tomorrow morning,” he promised. “If I haven’t found the fluctuating point by tomorrow morning, I’ll take you home then.”

“Good,” Jules responded. “Nothing against fish, but I’m starving. I’ve been daydreaming about scones.”

“Carbohydrate craving,” the Doctor said. “Why don’t you kip until dinner?”

Jules was tempted to take him up on that suggestion, but she asked, “So, are you gonna look around for your fluctuating thingamabob?”

“It seems like a good way to pass the time until the festival starts.”

“Right, then,” said Jules. “In that case, I’m coming with you.”

(vii)

“One thing I don’t get.”

“What’s that?” asked the Doctor.

They sat together on woven mats, watching the sun sink down over the horizon, a glorious panorama of red and purple. In the east rose three moons: one very large, the other two smaller.

“How come everyone here speaks English?”

“They don’t,” the Doctor said. “You’re just hearing English in your mind. The TARDIS translates everything for you.”

“Cor!” said Jules, rubbing her forehead. “Seriously? In my head?”

“Mmmhmm,” he smiled. “That’s usually the first question people ask.”

“Guess I’m a little slow on the uptake,” laughed Jules. She used a twig to draw patterns in the white sand, watching the Nelumbians around them, cleaning up after the meal. Jules suspected that this festival normally would be more boisterous, but given recent events, nobody felt much like celebrating.

Leonidis sat apart from the others, seemingly lost in thought. The threat to Alena’s life hadn’t brought the king and queen any closer together; she sat at some distance from her mate, surrounded by her usual all-female coterie. Around the adults, children played in the sand, more resilient than their elders, but a pall of sadness hung over the entire group. Their idyllic innocence had been shattered. Perhaps Leonidis looked so grim because he knew he could never protect his people from the rapacious greed of men like Driscoll.

As twilight deepened, the adults began pairing off. The Doctor looked at Jules and smiled, running his fingertips lightly down the inside of her arm. She was surprised to feel herself respond: the day had been long and exhausting. But this was her last night in paradise; might as well make the most of it. The Doctor stood, tugging her to her feet, and they strolled the length of the beach, beyond the stone fortress, until they reached a secluded spot, away from the sight of the others, then they lay together in the sand.

In the mellow afterglow, Jules almost fell asleep, until the Doctor nudged her back to awareness.

“What?” she mumbled.

“Get dressed,” he murmured. Already he’d donned his swimming trunks.

“Why?” Jules sat up, brushing off sand and grabbing for her bikini. Without being consciously aware of it, she was checking the sky for signs of disturbance. “Is something wrong?”

“No. Just be ready to move.”

They sat waiting, the Doctor’s gaze fixed on the strip of beach in back of the fortress. A few moments later, Jules saw something, a shadow in the dim light. Even from this distance, the singular shape of Leonidis could not be mistaken.

After a quiet splash, Jules whispered, “Evening swim, then?”

“To what purpose, though?” the Doctor whispered back. “Come on.”

They raced toward the water, and they climbed into a dugout that had been dragged up onto the sand. “In you go,” the Doctor said.

“After him?”

“We’ll never catch him by swimming,” the Doctor grinned.

All three moons had risen now, providing more than enough light. The Doctor had no difficulty keeping track of Leonidis, following the tiny shape of his dark head as it bobbed to the surface from time to time, but even paddling in a dugout, Jules and the Doctor could barely keep up with him.

“Where’s he going?” asked Jules.

“I’m hoping he’ll lead us to the point that’s in flux,” the Doctor said.

It looked to Jules as though Leonidis had taken a route that led around the outer edge of the archipelago; she and the Doctor hadn’t explored this far. Over the wind, she could hear the faint cries of night-dwelling creatures in the mangrove jungles. The waves were stronger out here, too, away from the shoreline. Jules hoped that she and the Doctor would be safe. She kept her focus on paddling, though she would have liked to study the three moons: the biggest one was a pale yellow, the smallest was a kind of dusky gray, and the third made her think of a ripe apricot.

The Doctor must have noticed her looking, because he said, “Every fifty-two months.”

“What?”

“The three moons are only full at the same time every fifty-two months.”

“Is that important?”

“It’s a special night to the Nelumbians. They say any child born at the Three Moons festival will be blessed with good luck.”

They rounded a bend where the last island trailed into the ocean, a lonely promontory jutting out into the waves.

“There!” the Doctor said, pointing to a dark patch.

“What’s that?”

“A cave.” They turned the dugout with effort, fighting against the current. “ _Allons-y_ , Jules!”

Her arms were shaking with exhaustion by the time they drew up onto a precariously narrow beach. They hauled the dugout onto some rocks, above the high water mark. As they tossed the paddles into the vessel, they heard a horrible cry from deep within the cave.

“What’s happened?” Jules gasped.

The Doctor had drawn out the sonic screwdriver, using it as an improvised torch. By its faint illumination, Jules saw that the floor of the cave was sandy, descending steeply, then veering to the right, a natural cavern, much like those in the stone fortress. Jules saw the orange flicker of firelight.

She and the Doctor burst in on a scene straight out of a nightmare. On the floor, lying on a blood-soaked straw mat, was a naked woman, her belly enormous and distended. Her legs were apart, and Jules could see something grotesquely wrong with her private bits. She knew she shouldn’t stare, but she couldn’t avert her gaze, either.

Beside the woman knelt Leonidis, face contorted with anguish. “Why won’t it be born?” he whispered.

The Doctor took immediate stock of the situation. “The baby is breach,” he said, kneeling at the woman’s other side and checking her vital signs. Jules realized then what she was seeing, an infant’s foot, tiny and blue.

From the king’s blank expression, he had no idea what this meant.

“Breach—the baby’s coming feet-first!”

“Don’t they always?”

“Not human babies!” The Doctor took the woman’s head in his hands, fingers on her temples, just as he’d done with Jules. He spoke out loud.

“Delilah? Delilah, can you hear me? If you can, just blink.”

Incredibly, the woman’s eyelids fluttered. She was exhausted beyond measure—God only knew how long she’d been in labor—and given the blood loss, she might be very close to death. But she was still cognizant, still aware of her surroundings.

“Good! Listen to me, Delilah—I’m going to push the baby back inside you, turn it around, and help you deliver it. You’ll feel some pressure, but not any pain. When the baby’s facing head-first, I’ll need you to push it out. Can you do that? Just blink to say yes.”

The eyelids flicked again. Delilah’s breath was coming swift and irregular, and Jules worried she wouldn’t live long enough to deliver the baby.

“Right.” The Doctor shut his eyes, fingers pushing into the woman’s temples.

“What’re you doing?” whispered Jules.

“Blocking pain receptors, putting her into a kind of trance.” The Doctor eased Delilah’s head back to the mat and turned his attention to the distressed newborn. He put one hand low on Delilah’s abdomen, eyes closed again, the other hand on the infant’s foot. Then, incredibly, the tiny limb began to disappear into its mother.

“That’s right,” the Doctor murmured. “Back you go.”

Jules was torn between watching him work and watching Leonidis. Several mysteries had been solved, but even more questions had been raised. So this was where Delilah had been hiding—but had it been her idea or that of Leonidis for her to deliver the baby in the cave rather than in the cleaner, better-equipped _Nereus_? Leonidis must have been having an affair with Delilah—almost certainly he was the baby’s father—which explained Alena’s hostility toward her mate. And Delilah’s contact with Leonidis explained why the arrival of subsequent newcomers on the planet hadn’t surprised him, and why he’d been so quick to dismiss Driscoll’s mining plans.

The bigger question, to Jules, was what had these two seen in each other? Whatever had drawn two such vastly different people together; what kind of bizarre love had they shared? Looking at Delilah, Jules wondered, _She really let Leonidis shag her?_ But then she had to scold herself, _You’re a great one to talk, shagging an alien bloke_. And another question had been answered: the humans on Nelumbo Minor were genetically compatible with humans from other worlds, certainly enough to produce offspring.

“All right!” the Doctor said, shifting his hands further up Delilah’s belly. “Now, to get this little one turned around.” Jules watched him probe with his fingertips.

“What’re you doing?” she murmured.

“Looking for its head,” the Doctor responded. “Ah-ha! There you are!” He shut his eyes, pressing fingertips into two spots on the upper part of Delilah’s belly.

“Can you feel it? Is it all right? What’s going on in there?” Jules babbled.

“Shh,” the Doctor said, eyes still closed. “I’m engaging its reflexes… there… there you are! That’s right, just give me a lovely little somersault… head over heels; that’s right!”

Amazed, Jules watched a ripple of movement across the pale, taut skin as the baby rolled itself inside its mother’s womb.

“And there it is!” the Doctor gasped, leaning back. “All right—Leonidis, get behind her and prop her up into a squatting position.”

The king was too stunned to argue. He shifted Delilah up and leaned her weight against him, wrapping his long arms around her ribs.

The Doctor put his hands on Delilah’s temples again. “I need you to push,” he said. “Just a few times, that’s all it should take, and you’ll have your baby. All right?”

Delilah blinked, taking a deep breath. Then, for one crazy moment, she almost smiled. Her hair was a tangled mess, matted to her scalp with sweat; she was so weak she couldn’t support herself, but somewhere in the pain-addled depths of her mind, she found some joy, some small ember of hope. For an instant, Jules saw the color of her eyes, a lovely, clear hazel.

Delilah tried to start pushing, but it was obvious that her prior exertions had left her muscles as limp as banana peels. She did her best, gasping and straining, but the baby was just too big.

“Help her, Jules!” the Doctor said.

“How?”

“Push! Put your hands on the baby and push!”

“Like this?” Jules put her hands on Delilah’s belly, finding a bump that might have been the baby’s backside.

“Right! Now—Delilah, Jules is going to help you. When you push, she’ll push with you. Just give me a little more, all right?”

Delilah mouthed the word, “Yes.”

“All right, then. One—two—three—push!”

Delilah’s face screwed up with the agony of her effort, and Jules pushed down on the infant’s rump. Incredibly, she felt something giving way beneath her hands.

“That’s it! I can see the head now! Keep going!”

The two women kept working, and the Doctor reached between Delilah’s thighs, grasping the baby’s head in his hands as it emerged. With one last straining heave, the infant popped out completely, and Delilah sagged back against Leonidis. A pulpy blob that must be the placenta followed the baby, oozing out in a gush of dark blood. Jules went to the Doctor’s side, eager to see the newborn, but she froze, horrified: the Doctor was smacking the baby’s bottom, to no avail. No breath, no cries, nothing: the infant was cold and still and blue in his hands.

“Oh, no,” whispered Jules. “No… it can’t be.”

The Doctor cleaned mucus from the baby’s face and began breathing into its mouth.

“What happened?” whispered Jules, tears streaming down her cheeks. “It was alive just now—you turned it around!”

The Doctor didn’t answer, continuing his desperate efforts to revive the baby, breathing into its mouth and smacking its bottom. Nearby, Leonidis knelt, head bowed and eyes closed. The posture of surrender enraged Jules: she didn’t want the past hours of bloodshed and upheaval to end without at least one small spark of redemptive hope.

“Come on!” she scolded the infant. “Come on, don’t just give up! Fight!”

The Doctor took a long, deep breath, his entire chest expanding, then he exhaled into the baby’s mouth. Jules saw the tiny body jolt.

“Oh, my God, it’s moving!”

The Doctor smacked the baby’s bottom again, and with a violent start it drew in its first breath, exhaling a loud, gasping wail.

“It’s alive!” screamed Jules, almost beside herself with happiness. “Doctor—it’s alive; you did it!”

The baby continue to howl, its skin turning from blue to purple to violent red as life-giving oxygen flooded its system.

“Oh, yes!” the Doctor cried, knotting the umbilical cord in two places and cutting between the knots with his sonic screwdriver. “A new, healthy little human boy! Leonidis,” he said, “Leonidis, you have a son.”

The king didn’t respond. Jules turned to look at him.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

The Doctor turned his head and looked also, making a noise of dismay. Delilah’s last breath had left her, perhaps just as her child had drawn its first. Jules reeled from the impact, from the realization that life and death could dwell together as such intimate bedfellows.

Still cradling the baby in one arm, the Doctor knelt beside Delilah, checking her vital signs, but it was too late: she was dead as clay. Her hazel eyes were still open, though, staring up at nothing. The Doctor reached down and lowered the lids with his fingertips.

“Here,” he said, holding up the baby to Leonidis. “He’s yours.”

The king stared at the infant, grief-stricken and baffled.

“He’s your child,” the Doctor said, trying to explain. “Your flesh and blood, as much as Delilah’s.”

Leonidis shook his head. “How can he be? Children are the creation of women.” He pointed to the infant’s hands and feet. “It’s not one of us.”

Jules looked at the baby, noticing for the first time its tiny digits: two joints, not three, and no webbing.

“But he’s _your_ child,” she said. “You made love to Delilah; you started the baby growing inside her! He might not look exactly like you, but he’s still yours!”

“Jules,” the Doctor murmured. He said to Leonidis, “As Delilah’s lover, you still should have some say in the baby’s fate. What would you have us do with him?”

Voice muffled with grief, Leonidis said, “Take him to Delilah’s kin on Aldrovanda Seven. Perhaps they can raise him.”

“All right, then.” The Doctor stood, the baby boy cradled in his arms. “If you send him away now, you’ll never see him again.”

“What difference does it make if his mother is gone?” Leonidis touched Delilah’s frizzy brown hair. Without looking directly at the Doctor, he said, “Please leave.”

Jules had all she could do not to physically pummel him. The Doctor saw her angry expression and shot her a stern warning with his eyes. With a jerk of his head, he motioned for her to follow him, and they left the king alone with the body of his dead love.

“Doctor how could you just let him—”

“Shh!” the Doctor scolded. “Jules, what’s he supposed to do, go back to the tribe and ask Alena to raise the bastard half-breed son he fathered with a woman from another planet?”

Put that way, even in such blunt, crude terms, Jules recognized the truth of the situation. “Shit,” she muttered.

“He’s too human to be raised here,” the Doctor said. They’d reached the mouth of the cave, and by the light of the three moons, they could see that the tide had stopped running, the sea very still and calm. Jules dragged the dugout down to the water’s edge. The Doctor followed, saying, “Here, you hold him and I’ll paddle.”

“Can you manage by yourself?” asked Jules, clambering into the dugout. The Doctor put the baby in her arms. The newborn had stopped crying, and now he slept, oblivious to the dramatic circumstances of his birth. “Be sure to support his head,” the Doctor said.

“Oof,” said Jules, carefully shifting the child’s weight. “He’s awfully big, innit?”

The Doctor got into the dugout and began paddling them away from the cave. Jules stared around in a daze, trying to drink it all in and impress it upon her memory forever. Beneath the light of the three moons, the sea had turned the most extraordinary shade of lapis blue. In the distance she could see the dark smudge of the trees, the pale sand of the beaches.

The Doctor didn’t return them to the island where the Nelumbians lived, instead angling the craft toward the island where they’d left the TARDIS. Jules was startled to see it there, like something from a half-remembered dream.

She and the Doctor left the dugout and paddles high up on the beach, trudging through the soft sand. The bright lights and cool interior of the time machine came as a shock after the warm, tropical night air. With the baby still in her arms, Jules turned and stared out over the sea, wishing for a photo or some token the child could carry with him, some memento of his homeworld. Then she was back inside the ship, the metal grating cold beneath her bare feet.

“Will he be lucky, d’you think?” she asked.

“What?” the Doctor asked, startled.

“Well, he was born when the three moons were full. You reckon he’ll be lucky?”

“Who can say?” the Doctor said. “Time’s in flux.”

“Around him?” Jules stared down at the child, unremarkable apart from his size.

“That’s our fluctuating point, right there. Him.”

“Cor!” said Jules. “Seriously?”

“That’s why I couldn’t find the point… he was still inside his mother.” The Doctor turned to the console. “Hold on,” he said, throwing a lever. “We’re off to Aldrovanda Seven, to see if we can find him a home.”

Jules held on to a support post with one arm, the baby in her other arm, its head resting on her shoulder. Wondering what this next alien world would be like, she told the infant, “Not even half an hour old, and you’re already having an adventure.”

**To be continued…**


	3. Red Rain/ Butterfly in Reverse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit where credit is due: The tile for Part III is stolen from Peter Gabriel, and the title for the Epilogue is stolen from Counting Crows.

**Part III**

_Red Rain_

“I hope you’ve got a shower in here somewhere?”

“Back near the wardrobe,” the Doctor confirmed. He touched a knob on the control panel. “We’re in the Time Vortex now—let’s get changed and find a blanket for our little friend, there.”

In the wardrobe, Jules located her discarded clothes, the khakis and knitted top she’d worn to work the morning of the Doctor’s arrival—which now seemed like something she’d read about or seen on telly, so very remote from the present moment.

“I can’t believe Leonidis would just—” she burst out.

“Jules, stop it.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

The Doctor had found a soft blanket, and he used it now to wrap the baby. Jules watched the quick, practiced flicks of his hands.

“You look like you’ve done that a lot,” she said without really thinking, then drew up short at the expression on the Doctor’s face—hollow, the dark eyes wild and tormented.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Where’s the bathroom? I’ll chivvy along before I drop another clanger.”

His face relaxed, and he pointed. “In there.”

The showers were big, grand, luxurious as a spa, all marble surfaces and brass fixtures. Jules found a towel, soap, and comb. Standing in the delicious rush of hot water, she wondered about the ship’s plumbing, but then shrugged it off, toweling herself dry, glad just be clean again. Who cared where the water came from and went to?

After the shower, she took charge of the infant so that the Doctor could wash. Jules explored the area around the vast wardrobe, hoping to find some kind of basket in which the baby could sleep. She wandered aimlessly from room to room, marveling over the variety in décor. Had the Doctor done all this himself? _Loads of time on his hands_ , she thought.

At last she found an area that seemed to have been inhabited, though perhaps not recently. A large bed, unmade and rumpled, dominated the room; there was an antique-looking chest of drawers and a full-length mirror. Clothes lay everywhere: strewn across the bed, spilling out of dresser drawers, hanging in an old-fashioned armoire. Several large pieces of mismatched luggage had been piled into a corner. A gorgeous vanity beckoned, its surface covered with cosmetics, brushes, combs, and hair notions. Jules touched nothing, but she smiled at a set of hot rollers. Apart from the mess, this almost could be Paula’s room, busy and feminine. Jules carefully laid the infant on the bed.

On a shelf in the armoire, she found a blue-and-white striped hatbox. She pulled it off the shelf and opened it; at home, Paula liked to use these things as pretty storage bins. This one, though, contained actual hats: three of them, nested inside each other, all outlandish in style but also somehow oddly poignant. Why had their owner brought them along, and had the expectation of their need been fulfilled or unfulfilled? The smallest was a practical woven straw sunhat, while the largest was a crazy number in purple, with feathers in the brim.

Jules removed the hats, leaving them on the bed, hoping that the room’s occupant wouldn’t object. Then she wondered if that woman, whoever she was, would in fact ever return. Deciding that the baby’s needs outweighed any other consideration, Jules shook the two pillows out of their cases and folded the linens into the bottom of the hatbox.

She adjusted the blanket around the baby, taking her first really proper look at him. His hair had dried, a downy jet-black stripe growing mostly in the middle of his head, so that he appeared to have a Mohawk. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, the lids as delicate as onion skins. His nose was a tiny button, his mouth a soft pink blob, his head very round. His body was similarly rotund, and with his thin limbs, he resembled a fat little spider. Jules grinned, her heart melting. The baby’s hands were curled into fists, as if ready to do battle with life itself.

“Little fighter,” she said, studying his feet—definitely human, very different from the feet of Saba’s baby. Jules searched in vain for some suggestion of either Leonidis or Delilah, but she couldn’t say which parent their son might one day come to resemble. Jules herself had looked very different as an infant than she had at even two or three years old. Children changed so much as they grew.

She could see one feature—two, actually—that the child had inherited from his mother. “You’ve got Delilah’s ears, you poor thing,” she laughed, leaning down to kiss the baby’s forehead. They were huge ears, sticking out from the sides of his head like handles on a pitcher. “If you’re lucky, the rest of you will grow into them.” She wrapped him back up and tucked him into the hatbox, where he fit perfectly.

“Jules? Where are you?”

“Erm, in here,” she called, scooping up the hatbox and hurrying out into the wardrobe. The Doctor had emerged from the bathroom, fully dressed, his damp hair drying into its customary waves and cowlicks. He stopped short, staring at Jules. He looked utterly gutted.

“What?” she said, not understanding his reaction. “I thought we should put him in something… you know?”

She realized it was the hatbox that had caught his attention; the look of pain on his face was horrible, as if someone had taken a machete and slashed his chest open.

“I can put it back,” she said quickly.

“No, it’s just… where’d you find it?”

“In a room… back through there, about four or five rooms over… I’m sorry, I wasn’t snooping, just looking for a basket or something.” She held up the box to show him the baby sleeping inside it. “Would you rather I didn’t?”

After a couple of jerky breaths and some rapid eye-blinking, the Doctor wheezed, “No… it’s all right.” Then, almost to himself, “All right.”

“Sorry,” Jules mumbled. “Can’t do anything right today, can I?”

“No, no!” He swept over and planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Don’t mind the cranky old man.”

She followed him back out to the console room, the baby still in her arms.

“There’s so many rooms, and they all look so different,” she ventured. “Why?”

Brightening, he said, “I collect rooms.”

“How can you collect rooms?”

“I see a room I like, materialize the TARDIS in the center of it, and tell the computer to make a copy. It copies the room and adds it to the ship. Isn’t that brilliant? And I can jettison rooms, too, any time I feel like it. Like purging old files off your computer. I once copied the Grande Galerie at the Louvre, just because I could.”

“You are so full of it!” Jules said, but glad to see him joking about something. Those fleeting glimpses of sadness she’d seen in him—a grief so all-encompassing that she could scarcely fathom it—unsettled her. She found his façade of happiness easier to deal with.

“And now that we’re both presentable and civilized again, on to Aldrovanda Seven.” The Doctor threw a lever on the console, and the ship began to rumble and vibrate.

(ii)

The contrast from Nelumbo Minor couldn’t have been any more shocking. Jules and the Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS into what seemed to be some kind of intersection. The avenues were very wide, but empty. Vast buildings rose up around them, soaring to fantastic heights, creating deep shadows on the ground. Jules looked up, hoping for a glimpse of sky, but she only saw thick, ugly yellow-brown clouds.

“Eew,” she said, wrinkling her nose at the ghastly, suffocating smell. Turning her gaze back to the street, she said, “Where is everyone?” Her eyes had begun to water and smart.

“Inside.” The Doctor steered her by the elbow across the street.

Flat glass doors whooshed open at their arrival—wonderfully futuristic, but also sterile and cold. Inside lay a large lobby, impersonal as an airport terminal. A handful of people worked at a circular security desk. Jules felt disappointed; she’d hoped to see more aliens, maybe even robots.

A young man glanced up, then did a double-take.

“Where are your oxygen masks?” he said. “On a day like today?”

“We just came from across the street,” the Doctor said.

“Still, that’s a chance you shouldn’t take,” the young man scolded. He fished under his desk and produced a pair of small, lightweight canisters with triangular plastic face masks attached. “If you’re going to be out there for even a few minutes, you’ll need one of these.”

“Thanks,” the Doctor said. “This is the University of Aldrovanda Seven, isn’t it?”

“It’s the East City Campus,” the young man confirmed. “Can I help you find something?”

“I’m looking for the associates or colleagues of a biologist named Delilah Delamere,” the Doctor said.

“Four buildings over, Tower ECC-808,” the young man provided. He tapped a button, and a three-dimensional hologram of the complex popped up; Jules was surprised to realize how quickly she’d come to accept these holograms as normal. “Take the lift to level 25 and use the tram to get to Tower ECC-808. Once you’re there, take the lift again to level 123. Professor Delamere’s laboratory is in Suite 123-Rho”

“How many levels are in these buildings?” asked Jules.

“Each tower is three hundred levels,” he said, looking a little apologetic. “It’s one of the older constructions.”

“No _way_ ,” said Jules.

A woman next to him rolled her eyes and said, “We don’t rate a reconstruction.”

As they hurried toward the lifts, Jules said, “It’s three _hundred_ stories high, and they think that’s out of date?”

“By their standards, it is.” The Doctor pressed a large, flat panel, which began to glow.

“This is wicked,” breathed Jules. “An alien lift!”

“I’m glad you’re easy to impress,” he smiled.

The trip in the lift felt like blasting off in a rocket ship, and Jules felt short-changed when it ended after only a few seconds. At level 25, they boarded a tram that circled the outsides of the towers. Jules peered out the windows, trying to see more of the city, but the tram moved so quickly that she could only take in quick, blurred impressions.

“This is the lowest-level tram,” the Doctor explained. “They’ll have one every 25 levels, so people can get from building to building without needing to go outdoors.”

“Is the air really that bad?” asked Jules.

“The entire planet’s been settled up,” the Doctor said. “The atmosphere’s polluted. Everyone has to live inside, in these artificial environments.”

“Shit,” said Jules as the tram doors opened at Tower ECC-808. “Humans know how to muck things up, don’t we?”

The Doctor didn’t argue with that.

Another lift took them to level 123, where a woman in a lab coat and protective eyewear directed them to Suite 123-Rho.

Inside, the laboratory was dominated by long work benches lit with variously colored artificial lights. A score of workers in lab coats milled about, examining things under fantastically complex microscopes and running test tubes through extraordinary machines. Lights on computer banks winked. Jules stared all around, mouth open.

The Doctor flagged down the nearest technician.

“I need to speak with Professor Delamere’s closest associate.”

“That’d be Professor McHenry,” the woman nodded, pointing to a door on the other side of the lab. “His office is right there.”

“God, I _wish_ Jess could see all this!” Jules enthused. “A lab on another planet, thousands of years in the future! You’d never get her out of here!”

The Doctor rapped on the door to Professor McHenry’s office, and it whooshed open.

“Hello,” said the young man, clearly startled. He had thinning hair and a neat beard, and his haggard expression made him seem far older than his probable years; Jules put him at about forty. “Can I help you?”

“Professor McHenry?”

“Bruce McHenry,” he said. Staring at the hatbox, he said, “What’s all this about?”

The Doctor and Jules stepped into his office. The young scientist stood, staring down at the child, amazed and befuddled.

“Professor McHenry, I’m so sorry to bring you bad news, but Professor Delamere is dead. She died on Nelumbo Minor.”

“Oh, no.” Dismayed, the young man leaned against his lab bench to steady himself. “What happened?”

“She died giving birth. This is her son.”

Thunderstruck, McHenry said, “Her _son_?”

“The baby’s father isn’t able to keep him… is there anyone here, any of Delilah’s family, who could raise him?”

McHenry said, “Her parents are both dead.”

“Any siblings?” asked Jules.

“Where are you from?” asked McHenry. “Nobody on Aldrovanda Seven has siblings. One child per couple, and that’s it. Anyone who’d want to raise children in this toxic waste dump is mad, anyway. I had myself sterilized twenty years ago.”

The Doctor said, “Do you know anyone who could take him in? The baby’s father requested specifically that he be raised by Delilah’s kin.”

“He didn’t know much about us, then,” McHenry snorted. “This is the last place in the cosmos I’d ever send a child to be raised. And no, I don’t know anybody who could take him. Everyone I know who wants children is already at their one-child limit.”

“Couldn’t someone adopt him?” asked Jules.

“Only if they don’t already have a child,” McHenry told her. He said to the Doctor, “There’s always the state-run orphanage, I suppose, but only a heartless monster would put a child there—the kids who aren’t adopted out usually end up working in mines and smelting plants, and their life expectancy is maybe twenty years.”

Horrified, Jules stared up at the Doctor. “No,” she said. “No way. We are not leaving him in an orphanage.”

“Did Delilah have any friends?” asked the Doctor.

“Most of her friends work right here in the lab,” McHenry said. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” the Doctor said. “I’m sorry to bring the bad news.”

McHenry sighed, his brow knotting with grief. “We’ll be lucky if they don’t shut us down, especially with the mess on Aldrovanda Nine. We’ve had to close our spaceports so that we won’t be inundated with refugees.”

“Did you know what Delilah was doing on Nelumbo Minor?” asked the Doctor.

“Yes, she was working to have it designated as Category Epsilon,” McHenry said. “That was fairly hush-hush at the time, because she didn’t want the royal family on Nine getting wind of her plans and sending out an assassin.”

“Yes.” The Doctor looked sad, troubled. “Well, it hardly matters now. Jules—we should leave.”

“Best of luck to you,” McHenry said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

(iii)

“What’re we gonna do with him?” asked Jules, surprised the baby wasn’t howling for a meal by now. “We haven’t even fed him yet.”

They were in the lift again, whooshing down to level 25.

“I don’t know.” The Doctor looked troubled.

“We’re not leaving him here.” Jules clutched the hatbox to her thin chest, maternal protectiveness surging through her. “It’s disgusting! What kind of life would he have?”

“Jules—he can’t travel with me. The life I lead is entirely too dangerous.”

They exited the lift and stood waiting for a tram. Several moments later, one arrived in the docking station, disgorging a dozen people in scholarly and scientific attire, some casting curious looks at the two outsiders.

“Jules, you can’t take him with you.”

“What? Did you read my bloody mind again?”

“I can see what you’re thinking, and no, you can’t take him home with you.”

In a rush of crazy defiance, Jules asked, “Why not?”

“Jules—can you afford to raise a child on your own? You haven’t even been through university yet!”

“I got a job at HMV!” Jules shot.

“And who’s going to look after Junior while you’re working?”

“I dunno,” she admitted.

“How will your parents react when you land on their doorstep with a baby? What’ll you tell them? ‘I found him in outer space’? ‘He followed me home’? Jules, they’ll never believe you.”

She sighed, knowing full well he was right.

“And what about the football, hmm? All your dreams? Can you give that up to raise a child? He’s not a puppy, Jules! You can’t send him back if he puddles on the floor or cries in the night.”

The tram stopped, the mechanized voice announcing, “Tower ECC-804.”

“That’s our stop,” the Doctor said. They hopped off the tram and made their way to the lift.

“So, what’re we gonna do with him?” Jules repeated. “We can’t just dump him in an orphanage!”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor sighed, running a distracted hand through his hair. “I’ll think of something.”

At ground level, the security guard said, “Be careful if you’re going outside… it’s going to rain.”

“Thanks,” the Doctor said.

Outside, Jules almost gagged in the sulfurous, polluted air.

“TARDIS, quickly,” the Doctor said, and they sprinted across the empty street to the blue box. Rain began to fall as he unlocked the door, the droplets a rusty-red color.

Jules tried not to breathe until she was inside. “That is _so_ disgusting,” she gasped, making sure nothing toxic had landed on the baby.

The Doctor flicked on a monitor, and they stood watching the rain fall outside, a sickly, polluted shower that looked like old, dried blood.

“Not here,” said Jules. “Please, not here. Let him grow up somewhere green, where he can play outside.” The Doctor looked undecided, so Jules pressed, “Don’t you know anyone? In all this time, haven’t you made any friends who could help us?”

He stared at the hatbox, mouth moving, as if he were talking to it.

“What would _she_ tell you to do?” asked Jules, suddenly inspired. “The hatbox lady… what would she say about all this?”

“Jules!” the Doctor said, jumping out of his trance. “You’re a genius! Genius!” He hit a few controls, and the ship began to vibrate.

“What’d I say?” she laughed.

“Friends! Of course I have friends!” His demeanor grew smug. “Many of whom owe me favors.”

“So, what’re you gonna do?” asked Jules, heartened to see the return of his good spirits.

“Something I almost never do,” the Doctor said, putting his hands in his pockets. “Call one in.”

(iv)

Jules knew right away they were back on Earth: the bricks, the concrete, the trees, the motor traffic. She wandered out into the empty car park. The air was very warm, very humid, redolent of petrol and exhaust fumes. The smell of food cooking wafted on the breeze, along with the scent of salt air. The ocean must be nearby. Overhead, the sky was the color of slate.

The Doctor emerged from the TARDIS, speaking into a flat black mobile phone.

“Yes, Dana Chesterton,” he was saying. “She volunteers there. Oh? Assistant Director? Can I speak to her?” After a pause he said, “Well, please interrupt her.” His voice grew imperious. “Tell her it’s the Doctor. No, not ‘Doctor Who,’ just ‘the Doctor.’ She’ll be very cross if she misses this call. And yes, it’s urgent!”

He smiled at Jules, rolling his eyes and mouthing the word “bureaucracy.” After a few more moments, he laughed, “Dana Chesterton! Yes, it’s me! How are you? Oh, splendid! Dana—I need a favor from someone in your line of work. There’s a baby, a little boy, who needs a home. I do hate to impose on you, but could you help? I’ll explain when we can talk in person—the circumstances are extraordinary.” Another pause and the Doctor twisted around to look behind him. “I’m in a car park in front of Memorial Stadium. Oh, thank you, Dana. Yes, we’ll need a bottle, a nappy, and some sort of baby clothes. I appreciate this. Thank you.”

He rang off, tucking the phone into a pocket of his long, tan coat. “She’s on her way.”

Smiling, Jules said, “All right, then.” There was a strip of grass nearby, so she sat on the curb, placing the baby beside her. The Doctor paced, lost in thought. Jules regarded the massive edifice of brick and concrete that loomed up behind them, some kind of arena for sport, she guessed.

“Do they play football here?” she asked.

“American football,” the Doctor said. “And baseball, too; isn’t that brilliant? In a few years, this’ll be all torn down, and there’ll be separate arenas for each sport. The Old Gray Lady has seen her best days.”

“Why?”

“Time,” the Doctor shrugged.

Something caught her eye, and Jules picked up a small copper coin, dirty and dull. She rubbed it with her thumb, just making out a man’s head. “Are we in America?”

“Hmm?”

“Look. This is an American penny.” Jules fished into the pocket of her khakis, producing a shiny coin. “A tourist at HMV gave me one for good luck when I told her I was going to uni in America. God, feels like that was a million years ago. See, it’s new—2003.” She studied both coins. “Who’s this bloke, then?”

“Abraham Lincoln,” the Doctor said.

“ _E pluribus unum_ ,” she read. “That’s Latin, right? ‘From many, one.’”

“TARDIS translation services,” he smiled.

“Will that ever wear off?”

“No, as long as I’m alive and the TARDIS is functioning, you’ll be able to understand any language, anywhere.”

“Blimey!” she said, staring at him. “Well, that’s dead useful, innit?”

“Take care you don’t let too many people know about that,” he said. “It could lead to a lot of awkward questions.”

She grinned, turning her attention back to the two pennies. “This one’s from 1972,” she said. “Was that a good year?”

“Not for Richard Nixon, it wasn’t.”

Jules laughed and re-pocketed both coins. “Hope I have more luck than him.”

They fell quiet after that. Time seemed to pass very slowly, as if the moments were moving through a thick, glutinous mass. This didn’t feel like ordinary waiting to Jules. Everything seemed to carry significance—the vehicles rumbling and whispering past on the street, the periodic honking of horns, the blades of grass, the lonely calls of gulls overhead. Still, for all the grime and ordinariness of this urban landscape, Jules felt profoundly glad to be back home again.

In the hatbox, the baby began to fuss.

“Shit,” sighed Jules. “Poor little thing.”

When his hungry cries became too much to bear, she lifted him out of the box and rested him against her shoulder, supporting his head with her hand, jogging him up and down.

“It’s all right, love,” she whispered. “Lunch is on its way.” She laughed when he blindly latched onto her earlobe and began sucking. “There’s nothing in there, trust me.”

She heard a blare of shimmering disco music, growing louder, and turned. “Oh, my _God_.”

The Doctor was laughing. “I got me a car, and it’s as big as a whale!” he sang out.

Jules craned her head, listening. “Mum used to play that song all the time when I was little,” she said. “Duran Duran, innit?”

The car that pulled into the car park stretched endlessly, a two-tone green behemoth piloted by a young woman with an enormous pile of curly hair. Something about the vehicle seemed odd, and Jules realized the steering wheel was on the left-hand side instead of the right.

The music was still blaring. _You know you’re something special, and you look like you’re the best_ , Simon LeBon whined. The music stopped when the young woman cut the engine. The driver’s side door opened, and she swung out, tall and slim, dark-haired, very handsome. Her impeccable suit had a narrow skirt and shoulders wide enough to need their own postal code. Her permed hair had been teased up into a poodle bouffant of dark brown curls.

“My mum looked like that when she brought me home from hospital,” said Jules. “She showed me the pictures. Same suit, same hair.”

The Doctor swept over to embrace the woman. “Dana!” he said. “Dana Chesterton!”

“Hullo, love,” she said, kissing his cheek. “And it’ll be Dana Levine in September.” She showed him her left hand, where a diamond ring glittered. “Sorry it took so long to get here—I’ll never get used to driving in this bloody country.” Her blue eyes took in Jules and the baby. “Who’s this, then?”

“Dana, this is Jules Paxton—she’s been traveling with me for a few days. Jules, this is Dana Chesterton, the daughter of Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, the first two humans who ever traveled with me.”

“And they’re still waiting for you to look them up again,” Dana chided.

“Yes, yes, I’ll get to it,” he grumped.

Pointing to the infant, Dana asked Jules, “Is he yours?”

“No,” laughed Jules. “No way!”

“Aah, Dana, this is the reason we called you,” the Doctor said. “This poor tyke is a bit of an orphan—his mum died giving birth to him, and his dad isn’t able to keep him. Since you’re still in the same line of work—is there any chance you could have him placed with a good family?”

Dana held out her arms, and Jules reluctantly surrendered the infant boy. By now, his wails had increased in volume to deafening, high-pitched shrieks.

“All right, all right!” Dana reached into the front of her car, pulling a bottle out of a bag. She maneuvered the rubber nipple into the baby’s mouth, and he fell silent as he began to suck. “There you go,” she said, propping him in one arm and feeding him with the other hand. “Open the door for me, would you?” she asked Jules.

Jules complied, and Dana sat in the front seat, holding the baby while he guzzled down his first meal.

“How old is he?” she asked, glancing down at the shred of his umbilical cord.

“About… about two hours old,” the Doctor said.

Dana must have known a lot about the Doctor because she asked frankly, “Is he human?”

The Doctor started to mouth the word yes, then he reconsidered. “Weeeellll…”

“Humanoid,” Jules murmured.

“Human-ish,” the Doctor said. “Human enough. It’d take a pretty sophisticated DNA test to detect anything unusual.”

“He’s a big boy,” said Dana, hefting the child in her arms. “Nine and a half pounds, easily, I’d say, and close to two feet long.”

The Doctor smiled, “I barely came up to his father’s shoulder.”

“Hmm,” said Dana. “At least there’s nothing wrong with his appetite—good thing, too, considering the growing he’s got ahead of him.”

Serious now, the Doctor said, “Can you find a family for him?”

Dana responded, “Oh, yes.”

The baby finished his meal, and Dana put a cloth nappy over her shoulder, jogging the tyke up and down until he burped.

“Sweet as a pie,” she said, kissing his head. She swaddled his bottom in the nappy, pinning it in place, and then dressed him in a short-sleeved cotton romper suit. In a twinkling, he’d gone from an orphaned space baby to an ordinary Earth child. “So, he’s not from around here?”

“He’s from another world, thousands of years in the future,” the Doctor said.

Holding the baby, Dana said, “There’s only one catch,” she said. “We can’t take children at the agency unless at least one parent is willing to sign him over to us. This isn’t the Victorian age; you can’t just leave a child on a doorstep. Without parental consent, he’ll have to go to the state, and I won’t have any control over where he gets placed.”

“Oh, no,” the Doctor said. “I want you to find a family for him, Dana. There’s nobody else I trust.”

“Well, you can’t sign for him,” Dana said. “You’re not even human.”

Jules found herself saying, “I can.”

The other two stared at her. “Are you sure?” the Doctor asked.

“Why not? I’m human. I’m from Earth. We’ll just say he was my baby, and I can’t keep him.” Jules swallowed hard and asked Dana, “Will that work?”

“How old are you?” asked Dana.

“Eighteen.”

“All right, then,” the young woman smiled.

“Jules… are you sure?” the Doctor asked again, gently now.

“Remember you said I was important? That you landed in Mum’s garden for a reason?” Jules nodded toward the infant, who was sleeping now. “This is the reason. It’s so I could help give him a home.” Fixing Dana with a hard gaze, she said, “The best home possible.”

Glowing with happiness and pride, the Doctor said, “Jules, you’re brilliant.”

“If you say that word one more time…”

He took her hand and gave the fingers a little squeeze.

“Let’s get moving,” said Dana. “Technically, we shouldn’t even be parked here.”

Jules and the Doctor climbed into the back of the car and buckled in, Dana placing the baby in the Doctor’s arms.

“What a boat,” laughed Jules, looking around the inside of the car.

“Ford Granada,” the Doctor said. “Eighty-one? Eighty-two?”

“Eighty-one,” Dana confirmed, starting the motor and fastening her seatbelt. “It’s only four years old. Runs like a charm, so long as there’s no snow or ice on the roads.”

Jules swiveled her head and glared at the Doctor. “We’re in the eighties?”

“Erm… yes,” Dana provided, glancing in the rear-view mirror at Jules. “Why wouldn’t we be?” Then, “Oh! That’s right; time machine! Are you from another time, then?” She gunned the motor, and the enormous car swung out into traffic.

“I’m from 2003!” said Jules, feeling indignant. “Doctor, why’d you take him back to the flippin’ dark ages? Why not bring him to 2003?”

“Because I had to be sure Dana was still here,” the Doctor told her. “She works for a private adoption agency.”

“Oh.”

“Dark ages,” Dana snorted. “You didn’t live through the seventies; I can see that.”

“It’s 1985?” asked Jules. “What month is this, anyway?”

“Tomorrow’s first July.”

Jules realized, “God, I’m only three months old.”

“So, what’s it like, 2003?” asked Dana.

“No, no, no, no, no!” the Doctor said. “No tales out of school.” The two women glared at him, but the Doctor was adamant. “Spoilers,” he said. “They ruin _everything_.”

(v)

The process didn’t take nearly as long as Jules had expected. There was an office, ordinary and anonymous; there were papers for her to sign, and an interview with a kind, middle-aged woman. All the while, she kept wondering about the baby and the people who would adopt him. At last everything was done, all the legal bureaucracy satisfied. Jules felt terribly empty when it was over.

Dana permitted her one last look at the infant boy: he was sleeping peacefully, hands curled into fists beneath his chin. Jules kissed his forehead, and then Dana led her and the Doctor to the big, green Granada.

None of them spoke on the drive back to the stadium. Jules watched the streets and cars and buildings slide past, feeling numb and disconnected from reality. Under other circumstances, she would’ve been begging for a butchers, eager to see what the world had looked like in 1985. Now, she just didn’t care. She couldn’t stop thinking about the little boy, hoping he’d be all right, hoping the Doctor’s faith in Dana wasn’t misplaced.

At the car park, Jules hovered back so that the Doctor could say farewell to his friend in private. Jules wondered what adventures had brought the two together—something like her own escapades, perhaps? A life-or-death scrape on an alien world, far in the past or future? Or something more mundane, right here on modern-day Earth?

The two hugged, and Jules could see Dana wishing the Doctor well. At last the alien disentangled himself and came bounding back over to Jules. They stood watching as the Granada pulled out of the car park, disappearing into traffic.

“Well,” the Doctor said, eyes bright. “Onward?”

“Will he be all right?”

“Jules—”

“What if he’s miserable? What if his parents are mean to him? What if his brother picks on him? What if he’s never happy?”

“You’ve been reading too much Harry Potter,” the Doctor chided. “He’s not going to be dumped on his wicked aunt’s doorstep with a letter from Professor Dumbledore.”

“I’m serious.” Jules felt her eyes filling up. “You’re a Time Lord. Tell me, what happens to him?”

“I can’t do that. For one thing, I don’t know. Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” Something in her face must have betrayed her pain, because the Doctor softened. “Come on… let me show you something.”

(vi)

The TARDIS had materialized on a bridge, a vast span stretching in either direction as far as the eye could see. Beneath the bridge, water churned. The scent of sea air was thick here, like a suffocating blanket. Overhead, a sun as pale as a lemon tried to burn off the cloud cover.

“What’s this?” asked Jules. The bridge rumbled and rocked as traffic crossed the span. She and the Doctor stood in another car park, one where people could pull off the road and admire the view from the bridge. Nearby stood a group of tourists, not one of who gave the blue box a second look.

The Doctor looked down. “It’s the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States.”

“Why’s that supposed to make me feel better?”

“You should’ve seen it before the European settlers arrived,” he said, eyes misty with nostalgia. “It was so beautiful—green, peaceful, teeming with birds and animals.” Hands in his pockets, he said, “This is a nation of immigrants, Jules. Even the Native Americans came here from Asia. The continent had broken away before humanity evolved in Africa, and it was thousands of years before any human being even set foot here.”

“Are you going somewhere with this inspirational lecture?”

He gave her an amused, sidelong glance; he knew full well he sometimes waxed pompous, and he enjoyed it when someone punctured his balloon. “This is as good a place as any for a little boy from another world to grow up in. He’ll be one new face among many.”

“What if he’s never happy?” fretted Jules.

“Like most people, he’ll be as happy as he makes up his mind to be.”

“What if he never fits in?”

“Oh, fitting in’s so over-rated, don’t you think? So much better to stand out.”

Jules stared laughing, then hiccupped over a sob. “Sorry.”

“Jules,” he said, “it’s never easy giving away a child to complete strangers, even a child that’s not your own.” He put an arm around her shoulders. “You did the right thing. It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t your first choice, but you did it because you knew it’d be the best thing for the baby. He’ll have a chance—a real chance to grow up with parents who’ll be able to look after him, not a single mother who’s scarcely more than a child herself.”

“Yeah.” She picked at the ragged edge of a fingernail. “So that Dana woman, do you trust her that much?”

Looking out over the sea, he said, “I trust her implicitly. Her parents were the first two humans I ever knew well. Before that, I’d always kept myself at arm’s length from the other species I encountered. Ian and Barbara showed me everything humanity could be—courageous, resourceful, intelligent, compassionate. Dana’s truly the best of them.” Ruefully he added, “The reason I’ve never dropped in on Ian and Barbara is that they shamed me. They never knew this, but they made me confront the worst things about myself, made me question all my assumptions about other species.” He smiled to himself. “They made me a better man, never an easy thing to admit.”

Jules slid her arm through his. They stood for a while, watching the water and the gulls, watching the sun play hide-and-seek with the clouds.

“Where’s home?” Jules asked at length.

“That way,” he said, pointing northeast.

“Home,” she laughed softly. “Seems so far away.”

“We can be there in seconds if you want.”

He was keeping the door open for her to travel on with him, if she wanted. But Jules knew in her heart that wasn’t what she wanted.

“No,” she said at last. “Take me home.”

“All right,” he said, and they returned to the blue box.

(vii)

The garden was exactly as they’d left it: the rose trellis knocked over, the neighbor playing “Hey Jude.” Jules stood staring around, marveling at the blessed normalcy of it all.

“Here you are,” the Doctor said. “Home, sweet home.”

“Wow,” she said. “You weren’t kidding.”

He grinned, “I’ve learned the hard way what happens when I don’t get my friends back to their families on time. Mothers don’t take it very well.” Leaning against the TARDIS, he said, “My offer’s still open. Another trip? One more planet? Or maybe you’d like to see Earth’s past? Or even another country in the present day?”

“Sorry,” she said, although the invitation tempted her.

He went to her and drew her into his arms. “Thank you for everything,” he said, his voice muffled in her hair.

“I should be thanking _you_ ,” Jules laughed. She inhaled the scent of his overcoat, unable to quell a pang of lust. They stood together for a few moments. “Hey Jude” reached its joyous crescendo, the music breaking over Jules in waves. The impact of everything that had happened in the past few days hit her then, and she burst into tears.

“Sorry, sorry,” she gasped.

“It’s all right,” he said, wiping his face.

Jules swallowed hard, trying to pull together her composure. “Back in 2003,” she said. Then she realized, “He’s eighteen now. Almost grown up. I wonder if he’ll start uni this fall?”

“Jules,” the Doctor warned, “ _don’t_ go looking for him. Let him live his life. He deserves that much.”

“Yeah,” she said after a beat. “Yeah, you’re right.” Still, she couldn’t help imagining how the boy would look now: tall and dark-haired, like Leonidis. In her mind, of course, he was kicking a football across a perfect, emerald-green pitch beneath the light of a dazzling sun. The thought made her smile, although she knew he’d be more likely to grow up playing baseball.

“I’ll be off, then,” the Doctor said.

“Will I see you again?”

“Maybe,” he responded. “We’ll let the TARDIS decide.” And with that, he slipped back into the incredible machine. The doors closed, and a moment later, the racket of dematerialization began. Jules stood watching as the blue box faded away.

She wondered what she’d tell Paula about the rose trellis. Then she laughed, remembering that Jess was on her way over. _I’ll just tell her we knocked it over playing football_ , Jules thought. Since Paula believed that football was responsible for everything wrong in her daughter’s life, that fib would be easy to pull over. Jules decided she’d sweeten the falsehood by offering not only to pay for the damage, but to help her mother replant the flowers, a final mother-daughter bonding experience before Jules left for America.

 

**Epilogue**

_Butterfly in Reverse_

The sound of rain falling startled Jules out of her sleepy summer daydream. She rubbed her eyes, wandering to the window; if the downpour let up later, she’d slip out to Tesco’s for some school shopping. In less than a fortnight, she’d be leaving again for Santa Clara, to start pre-season training. She checked her newly-acquired mobile, looking to see if there were any messages from Jess. Nothing. Not surprising; Jess had been spending a lot of time with the Bhamras this summer, trying to get them used to the idea that she and Joe were now a couple. From what Jules could gather, it wasn’t always a smooth process.

Bored, she drifted down the stairs to the parlor, out of sorts, suspended in this limbo between the end of holidays and the start of term. The telly was blaring, her parents parked in front of it, munching crisps and bickering.

They broke off when they saw Jules. “It’s that American bloke again,” Alan said, pointing to the screen.

Jules pulled a face. The Olympics had been running; apart from the football, the Games held little interest for her, but her parents were like addicts, endlessly debating the finer points of handball and tae kwon do. Knowing she’d never get their attention until the event of the moment ended, Jules dropped down to the rug beside the coffee table.

On the screen, a half-dozen swimmers in caps, goggles, and racing suits were climbing onto the starting blocks, shaking their limbs in last-minute preparation. The camera focused on the three athletes in the center blocks, two Americans and a Russian.

Alan and Paula resumed their interrupted debate.

“I don’t think he’s gonna get this one,” said Alan.

“Don’t be silly, Alan, of course he will,” Paula responded.

“Nah, how can he? He must be tired by now. I think his friend’s gonna get this one.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Paula laughed.

“Five quid says I’m not,” Alan challenged.

“Five quid says you are.”

“Deal?” said Alan.

“Deal,” agreed Paula.

A strange chill went down Jules’ spine, and she turned to stare at her parents for a moment, experiencing an unsettling moment of déjà vu. _I’ve heard them say all this before_ , she realized. _Where?_

“There they go,” Alan said.

Jules turned back to the screen, where the swimmers were bending into their starts. The timer bleeped, and the field exploded off the blocks, diving into the water. Jules could see their dark forms streaking underwater, then the men surfaced and began stroking, both arms swinging in gigantic circles: the butterfly.

One of the Americans pulled out to a fast lead, much to Alan’s pleasure. “Yaaaaah!” he yelled with an enthusiasm he usually only reserved for football matches. “Look at him go!”

Jules scooted closer to the screen, aware she’d almost stopped breathing. The swimmers pounded furiously down the length of the pool, hit the wall, and turned back. A nice underwater angle showed the men undulating like giant strings of licorice before they surfaced and began stroking again.

Alan was going crazy, exhorting the American to swim faster, but even Jules could see the young man was tiring, that his teammate and the Russian swimmer were catching up to him.

“Go! Go! Go!” Alan yelled.

The three swimmers whirled through the final few meters of the race in a white foam of bobbing heads and circling arms, then they all appeared to hit the wall at once.

The results flashed up on the screen, and Paula began shrieking.

“Five quid!” she crowed. “Five quid, Mister!”

Alan stared at the telly, jaw slack. “How’d he do that?” he sputtered. “That bastard—how the _hell_ did he do that?”

Jules ignored them. On the screen, the second American swimmer had raised his goggles to see the results, and realizing that he’d won, he pumped his fists in the air over his head.

Jules let out a loud squawk of surprise. “Oh, my God, it’s _him_!”

Paula was almost dancing with happiness. “I knew he’d do it! I knew it!”

Heart pounding, Jules leaned closer to the telly so that she could hear what the event analysts were saying.

_“…and an incredible win for Michael Phelps—the nineteen-year-old phenom from Baltimore wins his fifth gold medal of these Games, out-touching his teammate Ian Crocker by four one-hundredths of a second! That’s the closest we’ve seen…”_

Jules ignored the rest. She couldn’t stop staring at the screen. It had to be him! _The right age, the right city, the right features—it’s him; it just has to be!_ A wild sense of elation welled up in her, and a surge of something else, as well—the happiness of a proud midwife.

“Oh, my God!” she kept saying. “Oh, my God! It’s him!”

Paula, completely misunderstanding her daughter’s reaction, said, “He’s incredible, isn’t he, poppet? He’s so good, it’s almost like he’s from another planet.”

Jules fell over on the carpet and laughed until she couldn’t breathe.

**The End**


End file.
